


Born This Way

by TruthandChaos



Series: All of this Past Series [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: F/M, Parent Logan (X-Men), Parent Tony Stark, Post battle of new york, pre-Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2020-09-29 21:50:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20443115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TruthandChaos/pseuds/TruthandChaos
Summary: Most of you reading this have read my story All of This Past, an X-Men story. Since they're rebooting X-Men and created an entirely different universe from time travels, I have decided to follow that rabbit hole.Warning: There will be more sex in this one (because, well married couple!). Unfortunately, Fanfiction Net is kind of a prudish place where if I start to give my characters some lovin', someone can report me and have my story taken down. As such this story will be crossposted to AO3. It will be marked with an AO3X at the top of the chapter above where the music goes. You can go read the sexy goodness there.Remember, this is a completely different universe from X-Men and from the MCU as we know it. The events of Dark Phoenix have not occurred.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Most of you reading this have read my story All of This Past, an X-Men story. Since they're rebooting X-Men and created an entirely different universe from time travels, I have decided to follow that rabbit hole.
> 
> Warning: There will be more sex in this one (because, well married couple!). Unfortunately, Fanfiction Net is kind of a prudish place where if I start to give my characters some lovin', someone can report me and have my story taken down. As such this story will be crossposted to AO3. It will be marked with an AO3X at the top of the chapter above where the music goes. You can go read the sexy goodness there.
> 
> Remember, this is a completely different universe from X-Men and from the MCU as we know it. The events of Dark Phoenix have not occurred.

Playlist:

Annie Lennox - Walking on Broken Glass

Taylor Swift - I Know Places

Rag'n'Bone Man - Human

Glass Animals - Agnes

Post Malone - Goodbyes

5 Seconds of Summer - Easier

* * *

Chapter 1, Walking on Broken Glass:

Despite the red rimmed eyes, the tear stains on her pale blue shirt, and the twins she had in tow Holly Harper managed to smile at the doorman. She pushed the stroller holding her twin eleven month olds into the lobby of the Stark building. The security guys had more body armor on than the last time she'd come here. Holly moved through the lobby fast, her sneakers barely making sounds on the gleaming floors. She tried to fathom another smile for the receptionist, but failed miserably when faced with the sophisticated polished look the other woman sported. She didn't miss the once over and the dismissive, somewhat irritated flash that passed over the receptionist's face.

"I'm afraid we don't have public bathrooms here," The woman behind the desk said, her voice plainly devoid of sympathy. "You should try somewhere else."

Holly fought the desire to burst into tears again. She wouldn't. She told herself she wouldn't and hell or high water she would not allow herself to cry. Especially not in front of this bitch. Holly's green eyes narrowed and she let her inner pain translate into anger, "Pepper Potts please."

The woman, with a barely contained sneer, said. "I'm afraid Miss Potts is busy all day. You should schedule an appointment. I believe her calendar is full until, oh the year twenty twenty five."

Holly held her breath, counting down from five until she didn't want to strip off her gloves and fry this bitch's brain. When she had enough patience (something a mother of twins had in short supply as is) she gave the receptionist a smile that was almost feral. "If you call up to Pepper's office and speak to her personal assistant, you'll see she has _standing_ orders to be informed when Holly Harper is in the building." Her smile turned venomous, "Now if you don't mind, **do your goddamn job**."

After she made certain the call went through to whatever meeting Pepper was in that made her turn her phone off Holly moved her sleeping boys over to the expensive leather seating in the lobby. For the first time in hours she let herself heave a deep breath. It wasn't from relief. She wouldn't be relieved until she had somewhere to stay.

The Professor tried to talk her into staying, if only for her boys. As Holly sat there in the lobby of her father's building, Ivy and Rogue sent her texts and picture messages asking what needed to be boxed and what would be staying. Remy, her saving grace, held his own by running interference for her.

Around five or six minutes later Pepper exited one of the elevators, a broad, warm smile on her face until she saw Holly. The smile faded into worry. "What happened?"

As much as she believed that the tears were waiting for her father, it turned out they were just waiting for her friend. They'd grown close over the last two years. It made sense.

Scalding saline overwhelmed Holly's eyes as she finally allowed herself to fall apart. She wrapped her arms around Pepper, unable to control the sobs and choked out the words.

"I left Logan."

* * *

They were sitting in Pepper's office, her day schedule now cleared. Holly's gloved hands shook when she tried to pick up the tea cup. She felt guilty for ruining Pepper's white with elegantly printed black Fluer-De-Lis silk shirt. The tears were still periodically slipping from her eyes but thankfully the sobs had subsided into mildly erratic hiccups. She sipped the herbal tea and watched her sons play with the soft blocks Pepper always seemed to have here just in case Holly chose to stop by with the boys.

Telling Pepper still didn't seem real. Then again leaving still didn't seem real.

Neither did finding out her husband no longer existed.

Bile filled her throat. Holly swallowed down another mouthful of tea to wash it back. She concentrated on her two little boys and their baby talk, their gurgling and told herself mentally to deal with it. For them. First step was to leave and she'd done that. Second was to gather all of her stuff, baby clothes, toys and their supplies. Rogue and Ivy were seeing to that. Third would be to file for divorce. Fourth find a new place to live.

Pepper exited her personal bathroom after a few minutes wearing another shirt. This time a plain dark blue tee that looked more like GAP and less like something from Bergdorfs. She gathered Jamie into her arms while Tommy played on the floor. He clung to Pepper, all gurgles and smiles and big eyes.

"From the beginning Holly," Pepper said softly, sympathetically.

Dark tresses, much longer than they had been a couple of years ago, moved back and forth as Holly shook her head. "I can't." Tears threatened again. Her body shook as she tried to breathe and found she almost couldn't. "It doesn't matter." And it didn't. Not any more.

"Forget about Logan for right now."

Holly gave her a look that said 'yeah, right' and shook her head.

Jamie reached for his mother, "Mah."

The dark haired woman took her son. "I need to file for a divorce. I need to find a place to stay and I need to get a lawyer."

"Holly, you don't have to decide this today."

"Don't I? My husband…" her voice cracked, "my husband is…" god this would be so much easier if he had been _cheating_. If she had walked in on him and someone else in bed that would have been so much better than dealing with the reality.

Pepper's lips thinned, "Do you want me to tell your father?"

Holly shook her head, "No. I'll tell him. Is he up in R & D?"

Sighing, "When is he not there these days?"

* * *

Four hours ago with Professor Xavier in his office, they worked on the expansive capabilities of Holly's powers. Moreso her than him. Though the Professor never outwardly said it, Holly could feel the sharp edges of fear surrounding the memory of attempting to visit her mind. Of all the people in the school, on the campus, Holly's mind was the only one the Professor could never visit.

She, on the other hand, found that with a little training and concentration - she might never achieve a permanent block - Holly could control and sort through the steady stream of information she received when she touched someone or something. Right now her subject, as most of the previous subjects had been since these exercises began, was a t-shirt belonging to someone else.

Distantly Holly felt the trickle of blood down her nose and touch the cupid's bow of her lips. Her brow furrowed in concentration. Previously, when she hadn't been having much success and found out much too much about Remy's love life, she thought of the transfer like a river. One she could never quite seem to dam up. The Professor encouraged her to find another way to address the transfer from other people's things to herself because the term river always reminded her of flooding. Floods were uncontrollable.

It was her father, Tony Stark, who came up with the alternative. Download. He said it to Natasha Romanov when they were introduced. This is my daughter Holly. She downloads people's thoughts and memories.

Natasha refrained from touching Holly with a simple, polite, nod at the time.

Thinking of the transfer as data, simple ones and zeros being reallocated from something else to her made a world of difference. Suddenly everything came down to the basics of one, yes, zero, no.

The t-shirt belonged to Rogue and Rogue had it for years. Holly could see the years as they passed by her. Last week's fight with Remy and deciding for some god forsaken reason to date Bobby. Again. Holly chose not to see those things and it felt, at least to her, like a light switching off. Babysitting the twins. Little Jamie clapping and smiling as she taught him Itsy Bitsy Spider.

None of that was what she was looking for.

The blood slid a little over her lips. Holly ignored it and kept sifting. She went through years of memories before she found it. Evergreen eyes popped open. Holly handed the t-shirt back to a patiently waiting Professor Xavier.

"She never told me her name is Anna Marie. I've been calling her Marie for so long."

The Professor, looking as esteemed and well groomed as ever, smiled at her proudly and took the plain white tee back. "Well done Holly. Well done. How do you feel?"

The hankie she kept on her felt a little rough as she dabbed at her bloodied nose. "Good. Really good. I remember seeing her memories but they didn't transfer to me." She gave him a wry smile as the white cloth with blue stitches stained crimson. "I'm still bleeding though."

Nodding, the Professor turned his chair around and returned behind his desk. "As we continue to work on this, I would hope that your body's physiological responses to the expected pain ease. In a few months you may not have a nose bleed at all."

That would be amazing. Beyond amazing. She'd be able to kiss her husband without getting blood on him. Logan didn't seem to mind, but Holly could see it bothered him to hurt her.

As if he knew that she was thinking about him, there was a knock and Logan's voice at the door.

The Professor, somewhat confused by Logan's appearance when the Wolverine knew that the Professor would be working with Logan's wife on her powers, gave him the briefest of confused expressions.

"We did it." Logan said, sounding stunned and almost relieved at the same time.

Holly looked up at her husband and blinked a little. Where had the gray at his temples come from? Those weren't there last night or this morning when she left him sleeping. He usually didn't sleep in, but he just seemed so peaceful. The hair was a lot more...well more than it usually was too.

"Did what?" The Professor glanced at Holly to see if she knew. She shrugged in response. "Logan, don't you have a class to teach?"

"A class?" Her husband echoed sounding like that was the first time he'd ever heard that before. "To teach?

"Yeah," Holly tried to smile up at him, but found him not looking at her right away. "You teach History, I teach English."

He looked down at her and there wasn't a single spark of recognition in his gaze.

Holly's insides went cold.

"History," Logan repeated, nodding a little but not in the way that one does if someone understands something.

Holly, who had begun to pull her gloves back on, stopped.

"Actually I could use some help with that." Logan said and he didn't spare her a second look.

Professor Xavier now looked as if he too was thoroughly confused. "Help with what?"

Before Logan could speak again, Holly grabbed his hand.


	2. Chapter 2, Easier

5 Seconds of Summer - Easier

Post Malone - Goodbye

lovelytheband - Broken

Glass Animals - Agnes

Panic! At the Disco - Nicotine

lovelytheband - Maybe I'm Afraid

* * *

Despite this being a family matter, Tony had to ask Banner to come in. Not because he wanted Bruce to hear that his daughter was divorcing her husband - he needed to remember to find the most ruthless divorce attorney in New York - but because of the logistical nightmare of spatial-temporal-quantum repercussions.

“Holly, one more time. Please.” He asked her while removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Dad.”

Every time she called him dad he felt a little warm in his chest because he had a kid! Okay so she was thirty and he missed out on most of her life. Still, he had a kid! She called him _dad_. “Please Holly, one more time.”

Holly glanced at this man who she’d seen wreck New York not once, but twice. Pepper and Tony assured her the Hulk inside Doctor Banner was reliably under control. He wouldn’t be living in Stark Tower if the Hulk wasn’t in check.

They’d never officially met though. She’d seen her father and Doctor Banner on the news after the Battle of New York. The X-Men had scrambled the Blackbird and made it down to help clean up the chitauri that escaped the perimeter of the destruction during the battle. Through her husband’s memories she’d seen the destruction Doctor Banner’s alter ego was capable of.

Unbeknownst to her, Bruce was just as uncomfortable. He knew (in theory of course because they had not met until this moment) that Tony had a fully grown daughter. Tony had explained it with a very simple: ‘I was sixteen and I met a pretty girl one summer that liked me for me.’ Thor had clapped Tony on the back and congratulated him on youthful virility.

Those were Thor’s actual words. Youthful virility. The word tact didn’t seem to be in the Asguardian’s vocabulary. Probably off somewhere with the words razors and sarcasm.

The woman in front of him did look a little like her father, though, Doctor Banner supposed, probably took after her mother or Tony’s parents more than Tony himself. Except for the eyes. Where Tony’s were a dark brown his daughter’s were a vibrant deep green.

Then it hit him and Bruce could have smacked himself. “I’m sorry,” he took a tentative couple of steps toward her and held out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced yet. I’m Bruce Banner.”

Holly uncrossed arms over her midsection and gingerly took his hand in her gloved one. “Holly Harper.”

He shook her hand, “I’ve heard a lot about you. It's great to finally be able to put a face to the name.” And to the term that Tony was so fond of; ‘You know, my daughter is smarter than most of the people in this room. _Combined_.’

Bruce assumed he wasn’t included in that group assessment of the others in the Avenger Initiative. If only because he’d been called in to help figure out what happened to Holly’s husband Logan. Oh. Right. Tony not only had a fully grown child, but she was married and had kids. Tony Stark was a grandfather and he wasn’t fifty yet.

“So,” Bruce began as their handshake released, “do you want to go over it again?”

“We’re living in an alternate timeline.” Holly said it so matter-of-factly that Bruce was forced to process what she said twice before speaking again.

“Okay. Could you explain how? Or why?”

“Do you know anything about me or my husband Doctor Banner?”

“Bruce, you can call me Bruce. A little? I know you’re married, you have two children, and you’re a…” Was it PC to call someone a mutant to their face?

“I have a mutation.” Holly said, saving him from the awkward way he let the sentence hang. “My husband too. He heals from nearly everything.” She sighed and sat down on the stool at the work table.

Her father leaned back on the work table across from her, facing her and watching her. He was already taking mental notes from the first time. Top of the list was finding the patents for the sentinel program and locking them in the darkest dungeon he could find.

“That’s why they chose him. The mutants, X-Men I guess, from the other timeline. Professor Xavier was there, Magneto,” in a move very similar to what Tony did occasionally, Holly rubbed at her temple. “Kids from the school, Kitty and Bobby were there. They looked the same as they do today. There were…” she swallowed hard the memory of it flashing in her head. Those poor people. “A piece of legislation called the mutant registration act had gone through. Sentinels were there. They’re these big robots. They hunted us, adapting to our powers with help from Mystique’s DNA, overwhelming us, killing us. The government was collaring mutants, kids and adults, like animals and throwing us in cages.” Her throat was threatening to seize with a sob. It was a lot to think about the boy she remembered. He couldn’t have been more than twelve and he looked so… empty.

“The X-Men sent Logan back, not his body but his mind. They distorted time somehow allowing his present mind to reverse track and wake up in 1973.” She breathed out seeing him get out of a strange woman’s bed. It didn’t matter, she told the wave of jealousy and anger that washed through her. That Logan wasn’t her husband. Even if he had been, that was long before she was ever born. “Maybe you two remember the changing point. Mutants saving the president, 1973?”

Bruce was nodding. “I’ve heard about it, but I was probably four or five at the time.”

“Jarvis,” Tony called out, “find the newspaper from-” It was already on the computer screen.

“As requested, sir.” Jarvis said.

Tony genuinely did not care that the program had been scrapped. The fact that it got far enough for someone to have to go back in time to warp reality was enough. He’d spend what he had to to acquire the patents.

Holly wasn’t looking at the screen. “Do you understand now?” She’d seen it first hand in Logan’s mind.

Doctor Banner turned around and looked up at the screen. “I do.” He was always angry. Always. That’s how he kept the other guy in check. This though… kids in cages. People in cages. Collared for being different. He felt the other guy back there in the place that the Hulk came from. They were in agreement. It made them **both** indescribably **_enraged_**. 

* * *

Today was not the day to ask out Ashley the waitress. Not that he didn’t try. He sat drinking a cup of coffee, eating brunch like thousands of other people in Manhattan did that morning. He read the paper and when Ashley came by and smiled at him, asked him if he wanted a refill, Steve Rogers decided not to and said no thank you. He paid his bill, left a tip and headed back. The walk to the subway was uneventful, as usual. The subway ride remained the same as always. He was back at Stark Tower and heading up to the habitat floor within the half hour.

After finding out his apartment had been lost in the battle last year, Tony offered him a room on the habitat floor. Steve didn’t realize, when Tony said ‘room’ he meant a small apartment. Kitchenette, bedroom and dining/living area compressed into approximately six hundred square feet. Compared to where he grew up, it was **huge**.

The elevator dinged and the doors opened to the habitat floor. The only other suite with an occupant was Doctor Banner. Or, at least Banner was the only other person prior to today. The door to the suite next to Steve’s was open and a woman, long dark hair, smaller frame, was struggling with balancing boxes in the middle of the hallway. A few stacks of boxes sat along the wall.

Long legs ate up the distance between where he was in the elevator and where she was trying not to drop the smaller box on top. His hand went out, stopping the smaller box, what looked like an old abused shoe box, from sliding off. “Need help?”

“God yes, please.”

In a move deft as it was quick, Steve crouched a bit, hefted all three of the boxes out of her arms and asked, “Where do you want these?” They were actually heavy, not so much for him, but heavy enough.

She, now relieved of the boxes, shook out her arms. “Foot of the bookcase by the window if you don’t mind. Thank you.” The woman twisted cracking her back and neck in several places.

He set the box down at the foot of the bookcase. His suite hadn’t come with a bookcase. He had to assemble one from, the name escaped him but he remembered the big blue wall on the building when he walked in. When he turned around she was already hefting another box, albeit a smaller one and dropping it on the bed.

The darkest green eyes he’d ever seen on another human being met his and smiled tiredly. “Sorry about this. Kind of an unexpected move.”

Poof, blue smoke in the hallway. “Holly?” A german accent asked.

“In here Kurt.”

“This is the last one.” A man, dark blue skin, whorles of scars or tattoos, and an equally deep blue tail came in holding another box. He looked sad handing the woman that Steve hadn’t officially met yet another box. “Are you sure this is best?”

She gave him a sad smile in return and nodded. “I can’t continue living at the school. Seeing him every day and knowing the man I married is nowhere to be found.” She sighed deeply. “Thank you for taking my classes.”

“Gern geschehen.” The blue man said in German, then hugged her. Then the blue man realized they were not alone. “Pardon.”

Holly wiped tears away. “Sorry. I didn’t get your name.”

He took two steps closer, held out his hand. “Steve Rogers.”

Holly’s brain, as tired and drained as the poor organ was, misfired for a second. The first thing to cross her mind was gosh, Captain America is _pretty_. She stuck out her hand without thinking. As he went to close the gap she nearly jumped back. “Kurt, did you see my gloves?”

“Ah,” Kurt cast around. “Pillow.” He grabbed Steve’s hand and shook solidly. “Kurt Wagner of Xavier’s School, formerly of the Munich Circus.”

Holly moved over snatched them up and pulled them on before returning. She shook Steve’s hand. “Sorry. I can’t,” she frowned thinking better of what was on the tip of her tongue. “My mutation doesn’t like new people. I'm Holly.”

Down the hall, the elevator dinged.

He had figured that Kurt was a mutant. Now that he took a good look at Holly, indeed every inch of her skin was covered save her face and neck. “Holly,” he said, “Tony said his daughter’s name was Holly.”

Her head bobbed. “That’s me.”

Slightly dumbfounded, he’d been expecting a teenager not a fully grown adult woman.

Voices in the hallway, both female.

“Thank you for your help Steve.” Holly had to mentally keep herself from calling him Captain. Her father had referred to him as ‘Cap’ when bringing her down to the habitat floor. Her dad loved giving everyone a nickname.

Ivy, whom her father referred to as Stringbean, was the first through the door with her vines carrying several of the smaller boxes. “I spoke to Remy. He said…” solidly brown eyes, no pupils or whites turned on Steve. “Who are you?”

“Ivy.” Rogue admonished in a southern, almost motherly way as she eased past the green woman. “I swear, livin’ alone for so long robbed you of manners.”

The green woman’s vines deposited the boxes in a neat stack inside the door by the closet wall then slowly retracted into what looked like her back. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Holly stepped between Ivy’s gaze and Steve’s. “This is Steve, he’s my new neighbor and you’re being rude.”

Kurt touched Ivy’s shoulder and said something in her ear. She frowned, “I’m sorry. I’m not good with people. Joan Morgan, though most call me Ivy.”

Rogue smiled at him and extended her hand, gloved like Holly’s. “Marie D’Acanto, but everyone calls me Rogue.”

They were all mutants, Steve realized as he shook Rogue’s hand. “Steve Rogers.” Tony never said his daughter was a mutant. He did say she was a genius like him, but never that she had a mutation. He also said he had grandchildren. There weren’t any kids in the room. No cribs either.

“Nice to meet you Steve. Officially I mean.” Rogue smiled at him. “I kinda saw you when we were on the ground during the Battle last year.”

Ivy blinked at her. “He was on the ground with us? A civilian?”

Kurt looked up at the ceiling. His girlfriend would never be quite tactful. Again he leaned in and whispered in her ear. While Kurt did not recognise the man, he did know the name.

“You’re Captain America?” Ivy said in astonishment. Sixteen years alone in the woods robbed her of social niceties. “The one with the nice-” Kurt gently covered her mouth with his hand and poofed them away before she could finish.

Rogue bowed her head, trying to fight a laugh.

Holly gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

A nice what? Left hook? Fighting style? What? He almost asked but Rogue said, “She spoke to the lyin’ cajun, he said the earliest he can get the cribs down here from the school is tomorrow afternoon. Somethin’ about U-haul giving him the runaround.”

Holly looked down at the watch on her wrist. “Think we can make it to Ikea?”

Rogue frowned and hugged Holly again. “Honey, I gotta get back. Beast’s got my acting classes an’ I’m sure he’s probably talking on and on about Romeo and Juliette instead of West Side Story.”

The reality of it hit Holly instantly. She wasn’t going to see the kids in her classes anymore. All of her lesson plans were now property of Kurt. Her friends now lived about an hour upstate. Her husband was gone and she was going to be raising two boys _alone_. If Holly hadn’t been hugging Rogue, her knees might have given out. It took her the handful of extra seconds that Rogue held on to her to get it together. Then Rogue pulled away.

Holly barely remembered saying goodbye. She was too focused on not freaking out. She didn’t even remember that someone else was still in the room. Dazed she stood there just trying to force herself to breathe normally and not hyperventilate. She wasn’t aware that she was crying until she vaguely realized her face was wet.

Somewhere, someone, a man asked if she was alright.

Holly, blinking through the tears spilling down her face, croaked the words, “No but what choice do I have?” Oh… that’s right. Steve hadn’t left yet. Holly breathed in a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry you had to meet me on the day my life fell apart.”

He, though not knowing her, maneuvered her over to sitting on the bed. “Do you want a glass of water?”

Holly sniffed, blinking glassy tear filled green eyes at him. “I don’t own any yet.”

Steve gave her a patient, concerned look. “I live next door, remember?”

Her head shook. “I can’t. I’m not in the right mindset to,” she sniffed, “control the flow of information from whatever you hand me.”

He looked genuinely confused.

“My mutation allows the transfer of thoughts, memories, etcetera from you or your property to me. I can control it, slow it down or even stop it when I’m not a complete and emotional mess.” Holly drew in a deep shuddering breath. “I literally cannot take anything from you or anyone that hasn’t been wiped by a negative or came directly from a factory without ever touching human hands when I’m like this.”

“Give me two minutes.” Steve said with an idea sparking in his head. “I will be right back.” He left the room, and took the stairs at the other end of the hall that was closer to Holly’s door than his. Two floors down, in a lounge that was used for meetings and entertaining according to Tony, there was a water cooler and a small refrigerator with bottled and canned drinks.

In the five minutes he was gone, Holly pulled herself together enough to get back to moving all of her boxes into the room. She was about to grab the big one with her grandfather’s record player in it when the door at the end of the hall opened.

“Your choices are,” said the names as he handed them to her, “Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, or Aquafina.”

Holly nearly giggled at the way he said Aquafina. Aqua-feen-ah. There was a little Brooklyn in there. She managed to tame it into a smile. “Diet pepsi? You trying to tell me something Cap?”

His face fell. “I-uh…”

She took the offered bottled water. “I’m teasing you. Though I don’t drink diet anything. The fake sugar gives me a headache in the normal human sense.”

Steve nodded toward the last box outside her suite. “Do you want help bringing that in?”

“If you don’t mind,” she said taking the other two drinks from him. “Thank you Steve.” He crouched and lifted the box like it weighed nothing. Which reminded her of the times that Logan would throw her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing. Which brought tears to her eyes once more. She blinked them away as he sat the record player on the desk.

If the kids were younger, not crawling around on their own, Holly might have just set up some pillows and slept between them on the queen sized bed. She needed at least one crib to hold her kids. A sturdy one. She took out her cell and called her father. “Dad, is there any way to get someone to drive me to Ikea?”

That’s where he got the bookcase. Ikea. Not that Steve said it aloud.

“I don’t own a car remember? One of the company vehicles. Dad. I have never driven in Manhattan let alone Brooklyn.” She paused listening to her father for a minute. “The closest one is in Brooklyn.” Again pausing. “Dad, oh my god. Okay see you in a minute.”

With a chagrined expression Holly turned back toward Steve. "Thank you again. Really."

"You're welcome Miss Stark."

For some reason that put a smile back on her face. A tired, sad smile, but still a smile. "Harper, not Stark. My parents never married." Her parents had a clumsy tumble in her father's parent's beach house one late summer evening. That was it. Holly's mom never saw him again.

But Steve didn't know that.

* * *

Next chapter: Holly confronts the new Logan 

Brownies anyone?


	3. Chapter 3, Goodbyes:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, Holly and the new Logan.
> 
> Also, the song choices below and in the previous chapters are all specific to the chapters. The lyrics on all of these songs were influential in writing all chapters. The ones in bold are what inspired the story to begin with.

**Post Malone - Goodbyes**

**5 Seconds of Summer - Easier**

lovelytheband - Maybe I'm Afraid

**Jonas Brothers - Sucker**

**Miike Snow - Genghis Khan**

Taylor Swift - I Know Places

Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don't Care

* * *

Chapter 3, Goodbyes:

Two days later, on the nineteenth floor of Stark tower, with sunlight streaming through the wall of windows in front of her, Holly waited for Logan to show up. The attorney her father hired, supposedly blood thirsty as she was vicious, sat poised, polished and prepared to do battle in the most expensive outfit Holly had ever seen on any human being outside of a movie. Or Youtube. She counted the labels. Dolce & Gabana watch. Birkin bag. Twenty bucks said the pantsuit was probably something equally expensive. The shoes were red sole Louis Vuttons in a very professional nude color. Her hourly rate could probably feed a small country for a decade.

Holly watched the world below, cars coming and going. Streams of people passing by. Tourists aiming their cameras upward. Holly pushed away from the window.

"When he gets here, just let me do the talking." The lawyer, whose name Holly just could not seem to remember said.

Holly took the seat beside her lawyer. "He won't contest it."

"When kids are involved these things tend to get messy."

"It won't. This might be the easiest divorce you've ever worked on." Holly murmured.

Seven minutes later, which was three minutes after the designated meeting time, Logan and his lawyer - a dowdy looking little man in a cheap pinstripe blue-gray suit and purple paisley tie - finally arrived. "I, uh," the little man stuttered out, "apologize. There was an issue."

"Bioscan?" Holly asked.

Logan's dark brown eyes met hers. "Yeah."

She tapped between her knuckles of one hand. "It's the adamantium."

He flexed his left hand in response. "Whole scanner shut itself off."

"You know you didn't have to walk through it. I think you just like stressing out Jarvis sometimes." For a moment it actually felt like talking to her husband.

Then he spoke again. "Who's Jarvis?"

Her smile faded instantly. "Jarvis," She didn't break eye contact with Logan when she said to the air, "might I get a cup of tea?"

"Of course Miss." A distinctly british male voice said into the room. "English breakfast?"

"Earl Grey, thank you. Please bring Logan his usual coffee."

"Right away Miss."

"That's Jarvis."

The little man cleared his throat. "Ah, yes. Perhaps we should…"

Her lawyer slid the neatly stapled set of papers across the desk. "We're not asking for alimony, or recompense for time lost. And," the lawyer side eyed Holly, "no child support. We require sole custody of the children."

His lawyer looked over the papers, visibly sweating. Holly almost felt bad for him. She wanted to ask Logan if he found this guy on some 1-800 commercial or the back pages of Yellowbook.

Logan's lawyer pushed the papers back. "Yes to everything except the sole custody. We require two Saturdays a month."

Holly could have reached across and fried that little shit's brain.

"With," his lawyer went on, "a provision that when the boys are old enough to be away from their mother, it becomes two weekends a month."

Holly lost it. "You have to be fucking kidding me. He has PTSD nightmares and knives between his knuckles. I'm not leaving my kids alone with him for an entire day, forget a whole damn weekend."

His lawyer turned his head, staring at Logan in abject horror.

Logan, lips pressed flat, "Can we get a minute?"

"Absolutely not," Holly's lawyer protested immediately.

"Not a good idea. Anything you say without witnesses could be used against you." The little man said.

Logan didn't look at either of them. He kept his eyes on her. The woman the other him married. "Please."

Holly rolled her eyes heavenward. She hated when he looked at her that way. He had something to say that wasn't for anyone else but her. She used to love when he looked at her like that. It meant he was going to say something sweet and lovely and now… now her heart hurt. With a shuddering breath. "Yeah, fine, give us ten."

"Holly," her lawyer said with emphasis.

"I said go. I want to talk to my husband."

The lawyers left the room.

The Logan that was not her husband watched her for one very long moment. "I get it. Why the other guy would have been attracted to you. You don't take shit, do you kid?"

Holly unsnapped the clasp on her left hand glove and clicked it into place again. "He used to call me kid. I'll tell you the same thing I told him. You don't get to call me kid when you've pictured me without a stitch of clothing."

He held up both hands. "Easy, I didn't come to start a fight. You wanted a divorce, I'll give it to you. I didn't wake up expecting to be married with kids."

"Then what is this crap with the custody?"

"The Professor thinks that one day he's going to resurface and we'll," he paused to look for the word.

"Integrate." She supplied. The very idea hurt her heart. One day her husband would wake up finding himself in a life he didn't know.

"And I don't want him to not have memories of his kids growing up. Every kid should know their father."

"You aren't their father. You're the guy wearing their father's face."

"They don't have to know that."

Holly thought about it for a minute or two. Long enough for a knock to come to the door and a woman with a tray to enter the room. She placed a plain white and gold tea service with a couple of chocolate coated biscuits down. "For Miss Holly." A larger than average white mug with the words STARK INDUSTRIES written across both sides in bold black lettering was set down in front of Logan. "For Mister Logan, black with one sugar."

"Thank you." Holly said to the woman who no doubt was someone's secretary or admin.

After she left Logan sipped his coffee. "That's good," pleasantly surprised, Logan looked down at the cup finding deep brown froth looking back at him. "What is this?"

"Italian coffee. You think Tony Stark lets his guests drink Starbucks?" Even if they were divorcing his daughter. "Two saturdays a month here in Stark tower with me present. We can revisit that in four weeks at their birthday party which will also be here."

Storm told him as much. Before he woke up, the other Logan and Holly were planning dual parties, one at the school and a bigger one at the tower. His wife's - the idea that he'd ever gotten married was still something completely unbelievable - father had been insisting on a big party. Rich people.

"How much is that lawyer costing your dad?"

Without blinking, "Enough to run a small country. Yours?"

"Too damn much."

"Don't drain our savings. It took a lot of time to save that up."

Savings? He had a savings account? He knew about the couple of thousand in the checking, that's where the money for the lawyer came from. _She_ managed to get _him_ to save money?

Logan watched the woman across the table. She wasn't his type. Not even remotely. He liked women at least his height, maybe an inch or two shorter. He preferred bigger breasts. Longer legs too. The woman in front of him, across the table from him, didn't fit those descriptions.

She was short and curvy. The top of her head reached his collarbone. He remembered from the day he woke up. She had the hips he liked to hold onto. Her hair was long, and dark, he liked that. Fuller lips and bedroom eyes. She was a fighter too. Logan would have put money on arguments between them ending in sex.

The other guy couldn't be so different from him in his taste in women. There had to be something about her that made the other guy want to be with her. Want to marry her. Have kids with her.

"I could try," he said after a long quiet moment. "I can't be him, can't replace him, but I could try being with you."

Holly laughed bitterly. It was an angry, harsh sound. "While you pine for Jean?" Between clenched teeth she hissed out, "I am **no one's** consolation prize."

He had an intense desire to grab her and kiss her. Hard. It felt like a memory. Teeth clashing, bruising force and dark green eyes accusing him of something. Logan felt his body respond in muscle memory. He might not remember being with her, but the rest of him sure as hell did. His jeans were a little uncomfortable now.

"Do yourself a favor, drop that torch you're carrying. She and Scott deserve each other." She said as she waved the lawyers back in.

* * *

The last thing Logan asked for, before he left, was to meet his twin boys. His lawyer protested again, reminding him that anything Logan said to his soon to be ex-wife could and probably would be used against him in court. Logan told him to beat it and the lawyer left with a scowl. Her lawyer gave him a dismissive once over, shook Holly's hand and walked down the hall toward the elevator bank.

"The daycare is on the third floor." Holly told him, arms crossed over her chest.

He started toward the elevator banks too. She turned left and went down a side corridor. "We can take the private elevator. I don't want to share one with that viper."

Logan assumed she meant the lawyer. "Why'd you hire her if you don't like her?"

"I didn't. My father did." The elevator arrived and the doors opened. They got on, the doors closed.

That's when things got weird for him. Really fucking weird. A sense of dejavu hit him so hard he was startled for a second. He breathed in and he smelled something sweet. He could almost taste it. Logan cast around as the floor numbers counted down. Nothing. Just her. He breathed in deeper and christ - that **was** her. How the hell did she smell so good?

The desire to kiss her again followed on that realization. A loud internal voice was telling him to see where this goes. Go with it. They were already married, they had kids and he wanted her. At least his body wanted her. The part of him that was still semi-rational was telling him he didn't even know her.

When his hands turned into fists, Holly caught the movement out of the corner of one eye. She glanced at him with those dark evergreen eyes. A flash of memory brought back those same eyes looking up at him from a darkened room, lust and need and those lips parted as he slid into that warm, wet part of her.

Logan wasn't sure what possessed him. No. He knew exactly what possessed him.

He reached out, grabbed her by one elbow and tugged her over. The other hand went into her hair, tilted her head up and he kissed her. He kissed her long and hard and she didn't fight him. Her arms went around his neck and hell yes, she bit his lower lip lightly. He deepened the kiss, his tongue in her mouth and somehow they were up against a wall of the elevator. Logan didn't exactly remember moving them there.

Someone cleared their throat.

The growl that came out of his mouth when his wife pushed away from him wasn't something he was used to making. Since when did he growl?

She was smoothing her hair with quick, nervous fingers.

"Doctor," she cleared her throat while wiping at the small trickle of blood at her nose. "Doctor Banner. What are you doing down here?"

The guy she was talking to was holding two orange soda bottles and a small bag of, were those gummy frogs? "The better vending machines are down here." The guy didn't make a move to get into the elevator.

Holly, coming back to her senses, realized they were on the third floor. "We're, um," she motioned at Logan, "going to the daycare."

The guy nodded, once more eyeing Logan. "So this is?"

Fingers fidgeting, knowing her lips were bruised from being kissed and her breathing hadn't quite gone back to normal Holly sped through, "Logan this is Doctor Bruce Banner. Doctor Banner, my -" no he wasn't her husband. "Logan."

Bruce almost wanted to make a smart ass comment, but he held his tongue. Holly looked like she couldn't tell the difference between up and down right now. "When I passed it the kids looked like they were getting ready to nap. Might want to hurry."

Holly immediately looked at her watch. Oh no. It was almost 1 pm. "Right. Sorry." She stepped off and started walking.

Logan, still annoyed from being interrupted bypassed the other guy without so much as a word. He followed Holly down the hall to a room where the blinds were being drawn. Holly was standing by one of the last windows. She waved him over. "They're being put down to nap, we can't go in."

He moved to stand next to her. There were a dozen kids, varying ages and sizes, all settling into a cots. Which two were his? He wondered. Then he saw the boy fussing with the blanket at the other end of the room. Dark brown hair, dark eyes, chubby cheeks. Logan's gut said that one was his. "Him?"

"That's Tommy. He's fussy when he's tired." She pointed to the next cot. "Unlike Jamie who goes to bed without an issue." The other little boy was already fast asleep with a pale green blanket haphazardly draped over him.

One of the daycare workers opened the door quietly. "Mister Logan? Tommy's asking for you. If you're quiet, you can come in."

Logan's stomach dropped. He looked at Holly.

"You know 'You Are My Sunshine?'"

Yeah but he'd never actually sung it before.

"It helps him sleep."

The daycare worker looked a little confused at the exchange, but let him in all the same. There were so many tots in there. Nearly all of them asleep.

Tommy's fussing stopped the moment Logan crouched in front of him. "Hey kid," he kept his voice low and quiet. "Aren't you supposed to be taking a nap?"

Tommy's arms went out to him, and big tears started down chubby pink cheeks. "Da."

Logan, terrified he'd crush the boy very, very carefully picked him up and put him on one knee. The kid immediately cuddled up to him, dark hair falling into dark eyes. "You need a haircut." It was all he could think of. What did Holly say? You Are My Sunshine. He could do that. He hummed it, because the other kids were sleeping. Tommy, his son - christ he had two kids - was out like a light in a minute. The woman from the daycare went to help him put Tommy back into the cot.

"I've got it." He murmured to her and settled his son back in and covered the boy in a similar green blanket. He leaned over toward the other boy. Jamie and gently pulled the blanket up to cover him properly. Logan, mind elsewhere, followed the other daycare worker back out. He stood outside the door in the hallway for a handful of seconds.

This Logan, the one who was still in his head even if he didn't remember his life, gave him a life to come back to. A wife. Kids. And he was going to fuck it all up with a divorce? What was that thing the lawyer said when he first met him? He said 'Are you sure you don't want to try a, "Trial separation.'" Logan said the words roughly.

Holly blinked at him. "What?"

"That's what it's called, right? When we live apart but we're still married?"

"Yes, that's what it's called." Her throat was tight when she said it.

"Then let's try that first. Before we end it."

Holly shook her head. "It won't work."

He crossed the handful of feet between them, "Why the hell not?"

"You're in love with someone else." Tear filled green eyes looked up at him, clear as day and something in his chest squeezed painfully. "I saw it when I touched you that morning. You're in love with Jean. Don't even think about denying it. You want to be with her. I'm not her. I will _never_ be **her**."

Why does she talk so damn much? "Give us three months."

"Why? You're not going to get over her. We broke up once because of the memory of her. When my husband found out she was alive we went through the worst fight we'd ever had. **Days **before we got married."

"You still married him."

"Yes, I did because he made me a promise you can't keep."

Dammit. "I can _try_."

Holly closed her eyes, breathed in and tried to remember her poor fragile broken heart. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her gloved right hand. "I'll give you a trial separation on one condition and one condition only. You can never think about Jean Grey in anything other than a professional capacity again."

* * *

Tony felt like breaking something. Something big. He settled for downing a martini in one shot. Damn that burned. "What do you mean trial separation?"

Holly, arms crossed over her chest, "The Professor believes that some of my Logan is bleeding through to this one. One day, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, they'll reintegrate."

"Or maybe ten years from now." Her father replied. He didn't mean to yell. He didn't. "Twenty years. Sixty. It might not ever happen, Hol. **Ever**."

Holly shifting uncomfortably, "Dad. I will give you back the money for the lawyer, I promise."

Money! "Honey this isn't about the money. Hell with the money. I don't care about money." He looked at Pepper. "You talk to her. I can't right now."

Pepper, having a much cooler head than either of them, "What brought this on? Last week you were certain you wanted to end it and never see him again."

Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Holly told Pepper and her father about the way Logan reacted when faced with his sons. Tony's anger softened. He knew what it was like to realize you'd miss your kid's entire life. He'd missed every single one of Holly's firsts. Never saw her first step. Never got to hear her try to call him dad as a toddler. Never saw her first tooth come in and fall out or held her hand on the first day of school. Hell, no prom pictures or broken hearts. She was nearly thirty when he met her and ten seconds from being engaged.

"Fine," he said after she finished speaking. "Fine, okay, trial separation. If he so much as makes you or the boys cry I will-" he had no idea what he could do to Logan. The man was literally made of metal and regenerated all damage. "Put my foot down."

Holly reached across the counter and took his hand. She squeezed gently. "Thanks dad."

He breathed out heavily. "So how is this going to work?"

"We're going to get to know each other again. See where things go."

"If he breaks your heart again, I will find a way to get Cap and Banner to help me break his face."

"New York is still recovering from the battle last year Tony." Pepper told him. "The four of you would level Manhattan with that fight."

He gave them both a look that said he genuinely didn't care and finally took a bite of his lunch. After they finished lunch, and Holly had gone to pick the boys up from the daycare center, Tony sat watching Pepper go through emails and answer texts. "Do you want kids?"

Pepper, startled looked up from her tablet. "Tony?"

He shoved some of the leftover zucchini from lunch around his plate with a fork. "I missed my daughter's life. Everything until she was nearly thirty."

"You gave her away at her wedding, Tony. You were there when the boys were born. You are there when she needs you."

"I want another kid." He said with some finality. "Do you?"

Pepper, flushing a deep red, "Tony…"

"You're going to have a step-daughter and grand kids. One more can't hurt, right? Or two? Maybe two more? Boy and a girl?"

"I didn't hear a marriage proposal in any of that."

"Ring shopping first. We can break it to Holly later."

"Are you forgetting to ask me something?" Pepper asked with a pointed glare.

"Keys," he was patting his pockets.

"Tony," Pepper called him back from whatever ADD moment he was having. "Did you forget to ask me a question?"

"You can pick the ring, then I'll do the down on one knee thing. Do you know what I did with my keys?"

"I'd like a fall wedding," Pepper said reaching over to the small metal tray at the end of the counter and plucking his keys out from under the mess of items deposited there. "And I am not wearing white."

He gave her that look. That one that Holly wore sometimes. It was how Pepper knew Holly was Tony's daughter. The look that said why on earth would I ask you to do something like that? "This fall." He said taking the keys from her.

Pepper, while riding in the elevator down to the garage, called her personal assistant to have the rest of her schedule cleared for the day. When asked for a reason, Pepper caught Tony looking smug. She replied with, "I am getting engaged."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No joke, I cried when I wrote the original scene with Holly/Logan. That hurt.
> 
> I need to clean up the next two chapters (one will be a date night with Logan) and then they'll go up.


	4. Chapter 4, Ghost:

I'm going to cry.

* * *

Ella Henderson - Ghost

Set It Off - Midnight Thoughts

George Ezra - Did You Hear The Rain?

OneRepublic - Rescue Me

Yazoo- Only You

Jonas Brothers - Sucker

Taylor Swift - I Know Places

The Chainsmokers - Something Just Like This

* * *

Chapter 4, Ghost:

(This is a step back in time.)

The shit hit the fan on a Friday morning around the four-month mark in Holly's pregnancy. Logan woke up to the excited sounds of other people talking in the hallways, rushing past the door. Holly, still asleep next to him, made no move to get up. He tucked dark hair behind her ear, murmured to her that he would be right back and got up.

Half awake she murmured back a soft okay, and turned over snuggling into his side of the bed. Logan, for just a moment, thought about forgoing whatever it was outside that had everyone excited. He could get back into bed and-

"You really think it's her?" Someone in the hallway asked.

"I mean, she's supposed to be dead." He recognized that voice. It was Rogue. "I saw Logan after it happened. It nearly destroyed him. I have no idea how he's gonna take it if it is her."

A pit of gnawing he didn't have a name for began to form in his gut. At equal points he wanted it to be who he thought it was. Only because her death grated on him. At the same time, he did not want it to be her. He remembered the feeling of his claws in her body and black veins around her eyes, saying he loved her as she died in his arms.

Logan, never one to procrastinate, sat on the bed next to his wife to be and did just that. He came up with every single plausible excuse he could come up with for a good five minutes. In a life as long as his, it wasn't much time, but it sure as hell made him feel like an eternity passed. One more time, before he stood up, he turned his attention to the woman in bed.

He thought he loved Jean. He honestly believed he did.

Then he met Holly. Holly who was terrified of hurting him. He almost laughed. She was scared of hurting _him_.

Logan, after another minute of watching his future wife sleep, stood up. He went to the door, opened it, went through and closed it behind him. Holly needed to sleep. He needed to wipe his conscience clean.

The walk down the hallway felt like it took forever. It took less than a full minute. A familiar head of red hair in a sea of other people. Kids, teachers, lots of talking all at once.

He was happy Jean was alive. The guilt over believing he'd killed her…it had gnawed on his soul for years.

It was a tense moment before she was drawn away by other people to talk and be checked over by the Professor or Doctor Mcoy. In a daze he returned to the bedroom he shared with his soon to be wife. Holly had turned in her sleep to face the door. Like she was waiting for him.

Dark hair had fallen across her face again. He brushed it away gently.

Holly's body tensed and shook briefly. Her dark green eyes popped open and she pushed up, her brow creasing. "Jean is alive?"

"I saw her downstairs," he told Holly, taking a seat next to her in bed. "I didn't mean to wake you like that darlin'." He leaned in to press a kiss to her mouth and caught her cheek instead. His brow furrowed.

"I'm sure you didn't." He knew the tone in her voice.

Pregnancy hormones were a bitch to deal with, and he'd been on the receiving end of her getting snippy before. Logan, put one hand out to hold hers, to bring her down from the spiral. He'd done it a dozen times since she realized she was pregnant. Seeing he didn't mean to upset her helped her rationalize. Other people didn't know it, but that's why they didn't tend to fight. Misunderstandings or miscommunications were easier to sort out when his soon to be wife could literally read his intentions when she touched him.

When she pulled away from him before he could touch her, he knew he was in deep shit. "Holly," he began.

"Go see her. You want to." Her voice was hard and sharp.

"I want to make sure she's okay." He again reached for her and she blocked his hand with that move she learned at some point. "Holly."

"I said," she pointed at the door, "_go_."

If he left this would turn into a real fight. A bad one. "No."

"I don't want to look at you right now. Go or I'm going to go." He didn't move. She began shoving back the sheets. "I swear to god Logan, sometimes you piss me off so much!"

If Logan had been the one with Holly's abilities, and she his, the fight might have gone differently. He would have seen she wasn't angry so much as she was scared. Logan's love, or at least in her opinion (based on things he couldn't remember but she'd seen of the 80's) misplaced grateful/thankful feelings toward Jean was a threat. A threat to their children, to their life. She put her hands on her baby bump a second after she slammed the door to their bathroom and locked it.

Holly stood there shaking, unsure of what to do. Call her father? No, Tony had only warmed up to Logan because he **had** to. The age difference, physical not actual, still skeeved her father out some. She sat down on the edge of the tub and stared at the tiny window on the opposite wall facing the courtyard outside. Tears burned her eyes and her throat felt raw.

He knocked and got no answer. "Holly, let me in." Frustrated when she again did not answer. "Holly, damn it." Still no answer.

He could just break the lock. The Professor told him if he ever did it again without it being an actual emergency, the repair bill was coming out of his pay. Logan stood there contemplating losing that money towards their honeymoon on Presque Isle and dipping into their savings to cover it. She'd kill him. They had been saving every penny to save up for a house. Holly pointed out their room - despite having been moved to a bigger one once they were engaged and expecting - was going to get a lot smaller with two bassinets and eventually two cribs.

Frustrated he dragged one hand through his hair and stood outside the bathroom door. "Holly, I will break the lock, screw the Professor. Open the goddamn door."

The lock flipped and he pushed it open. His fiancé stood by the sink crying.

"If," she sobbed, "you leave us…" her hands were on her stomach.

Shit. Shit. Shit. He would have touched her again, but she couldn't block like this. He had to tell her first, give her a moment to prepare. "Holly, I'm going to touch you now."

She withdrew before he could. "No."

"Honey, you've got an idea in your head that ain't gonna happen. I won't leave. I'm in this to the end you know that." He held out a hand to her. "Come on, one touch, you can see how much I mean it. You and me, the two kids growing inside you. That's what I want."

She sniffed, "Don't touch me."

He curled and uncurled his fingers. "Come on Holly, trust that _I love you_."

Gingerly she reached out and put her hand in his. A second later she was stepping into his chest and throwing her arms around him. "I trust you. I don't trust her. Scott's with Patience now, technically Jean's a free woman."

He wrapped his arms around her. "Even if I was interested," she gave him a warning look, "I'm not. I'm not a free man. I put a ring on your finger, and I mean to go through with it. We've got two weeks left darlin, and you're not getting away from me that easy." He kissed her forehead, tip of her nose and then her lips. "You're going to be mine and these two," he cupped her small baby bump, "are going to have two parents who want them and love them."

"You need to promise me something."

"Anything." Everything.

"You can never, ever think about Jean Gray in anything other than a professional teacher to teacher or X-Man to X-Woman capacity again. She is a teammate and a fellow teacher and that is it."

He could do that. He kissed her again, slower this time. "Come on, back to bed or you're going to be cranky later."

"You're just afraid I'm going to get mad again."

"Hell, yes I'm afraid. We're shelling out two thousand for this thing. I don't want you making bad decisions when we're talking to vendors and all that other crap we have to do today."

"Uh huh, sure, you're worried about the vendors and not-" he was kissing her again.

* * *

After Jean returned to the school, alive and mostly healthy without valid or rational reason - Holly remembered the feeling of Logan's claws slicing through flesh and important organs - there had to be some adjustments. For one, Scott dropped Patience like a hot potato. The Professor, Storm, Peter, Beast, were all ecstatic to have her back.

Patience moved out. Back to Albany supposedly.

Holly successfully avoided having to see Jean for all of a week. She stood across the hall from Logan's last history class of the day waiting for him to let the kids go. They had dinner plans with her father in the city and if they didn't leave in the next hour the traffic would be insanity. She checked the time on her phone.

"You're Holly," Jean Grey's voice came from Holly's left, "right?"

Do not be hostile to the undead woman. "That's me." She pulled a glove on her dominant hand and held it out. "And you're Jean."

Jean noticed the glove, but shook anyway. "Psychometry is an incredibly rare gift."

So is coming back from the dead. Holly didn't say it aloud. Nor did she worry about Jean taking a peek inside her head. The Professor more than likely cautioned Jean about Holly's built in defense against psychics. "Tell me about it." She withdrew her hand and peeled off the glove again.

"I assume you have to be more cautious because of the pregnancy." Jean sounded so...congenial. Almost pleasant.

"Hank's keeping more of my blood type around just in case, but it's important I'm smart about who and what I touch." Holly held her stomach. "It helps their father is the same blood type."

Jean's head was bobbing. Then she asked a question that Holly would have assumed she knew the answer to by now. "And the father? Is he one of the newer teachers?"

Holly blinked at her, dumbfounded. "You don't know?" She didn't know if Jean did and wanted to hear it for herself or if she genuinely hadn't been told yet. Honestly, Holly and Logan weren't huge on PDAs but they tended to eat together, sit together during staff meetings and slept in the same room. When Holly thought about it, really thought about it for a minute - well shit. Jean probably hadn't realized because she'd been with Scott, Hank and Professor X most of the last week.

The door to the classroom opened. Kids streamed out.

A few "Hi Ms. Harper. Hi Ms. Grey." from the kids. Holly and Jean backed up a bit to let the kids out.

Jean stayed, waiting for an answer.

Oh this was going to be _awkward_. Holly caught sight of her soon to be husband packing up his class materials. He didn't realize she was there yet. He looked so thoughtful standing there, putting away notes.

The best thing to do with a band-aid she supposed. Holly nodded at Logan and waited for the other woman to do the mental math.

The look on Jean's face. The succession of confusion, shock, disbelief and a touch of jealousy. Holly wanted a photograph. The petty part of her held up her hand, the one with the white gold band and small diamond with emerald chips. "I gave the dangerous guy a shot and he turned out to be pretty amazing." She told Jean. "Guess you were wrong." It was a sucker punch, but Holly had been waiting a long, long time to put that bullshit in a deep grave and cover it with truth. She didn't spare Jean another look as she went into the classroom.

He paused, setting everything down. "Hey," he reached out for her, wrapping an arm around her waist. "I didn't forget about dinner. Jessie asked about the battle at Shiloh and I got-"

"Sidetracked by the soldier in your head." She finished for him with a small smile. "Well if we don't get down to Manhattan by eight, you're going to have another battle on your hands. One between an annoyed Tony Stark and your hungry, pregnant fiancee."

One of his hands immediately went over her baby bump. At four months she wasn't showing as much as the OBGYN and Hank would have liked for someone carrying twins. The vegetarian nearly vegan thing was throwing a wrench in the works. If it was a voluntary choice, it would have been an easy fix. With her mutation, not eating meat and certain animal based products wasn't a choice.

She couldn't risk it. Period.

"I'm going to put this stuff in our room and-" there was a flutter under his hands. Something small moving inside her. Words left him as his world came down to realizing that was one of his kids moving. "They're moving around already?" He asked after a moment of awed silence.

Holly smiled up at him. She'd been hoping he'd feel them kicking her. "They're yours, of course they are."

"Not gonna lie," his hand shifted over her stomach as the flutters did, "I'd do it over again."

"Oh yeah?" She laughed. "Car sex and all?"

He crouched, lifting her shirt a little so he could press one ear to her stomach. "All of it."

* * *

And now you all know what others don't. The reason Holly and Logan don't fight. But...that's the old Logan.

This story took on a life of its own. It is now about eight chapters, almost 80+ pages with extras that I need to edit and work into current settings.

Reviews make it easier for me to know what you like. Or didn't like. Or if you hate me. Or love me. Or really want to hurt me over this.


	5. Chapter 5, What's Up:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my reviewers past and present. You make me smile.
> 
> This is fourteen pages long. Whew. I just edited this. I'm sorry it took so long, but, alas, FF has been messing up again. And their support email doesn't actually give responses. Their twitter doesn't actually answer. So little old me waited and waited and waited and finally, now that everything is fixed, enjoy the chapter.

4 Non Blondes - What's Up

Sarah Hartman - Monster Bring Me Home

lovelytheband - Maybe I'm Afraid

Imagine Dragons - Whatever It Takes

Miike Snow - My Trigger

OneRepublic - Counting Stars

Kongos - I'm Only Joking

Florence & The Machine - Shake It Out

George Ezra - Budapest

* * *

Chapter 5, What's Up:

It didn't happen often, these father daughter moments. Holly sitting with him while he worked on upgrades to a suit, talking about everything and nothing at all. No, it didn't used to happen often, but now that Holly was living in Stark Tower now, these moments were a lot more frequent.

Tony hadn't known Rosie long enough to figure out what about Holly came from him and what came from her mom. But, down here in his private lab, while she sang along under her breath to AC/DC, Guns n' Roses, or hell, even Whitesnake, he liked to think that was a little bit of him in her personality.

"How's therapy?" She asked without looking up from the pad in her hands.

Ah, therapy. The thing his daughter told him was unconditional necessity after the past New Year. Weeks later, alright, he could admit, he'd been erratic after the Battle of New York. If he wanted to see the grandkids - how on earth was he old enough to have grandchildren? - he needed to go to therapy.

When he didn't answer, Holly did look up. Green eyes just like her mother's watching him. "Dad?"

He was barely sixteen when he met her mom. Who was almost sixteen. Five long weeks before Labor Day weekend. That's all he had with Rosie. Normally his family went away to New Jersey for the entire summer. Memorial Day to Labor Day. What made his father stay in California that year, he didn't know. He never got to ask. Her father was there for work, not like his family.

Tony still remembered the minute he saw her. A pretty girl, sandy blonde hair with the most beautiful deep green eyes buying salt water taffy on the Santa Cruz pier. He'd been arguing with his father about something he couldn't remember and there she was. Rosalie Harper. A little taller than him, dirty blonde hair, bare feet with sand still clinging to her toes as she walked down the pier.

It took him two days to find her again on the beach. She wouldn't even talk to him. It took another two days to convince her he was more than money and a pretty face. Another day and a half and she let him kiss her. After that...well he didn't want to give up kissing her. They conceived Holly the night before they both had to go home.

He successfully avoided his parents finding out he had a naked girl in his hotel room. Not so much the nanny. It didn't take long after meeting Holly to figure out Rosie's letters were taken by the nanny. Where the letters went, he had no idea. Burned or destroyed somehow.

"Dad, you're staring at me."

She called him dad. His thirty year old daughter. "What do you want to do for your birthday?" It was almost comical, her birthday was nine days before his. The universe laughing in his face looking back on thirty years.

If only he'd gotten _**one**_ letter.

Maybe he wouldn't have graduated from MIT at seventeen, it might have taken him until eighteen or nineteen, even twenty because he would have been a teenage father. Looking at Holly, remembering Rosie, hey, it wouldn't have been all that bad. At least he would have seen his daughter take her first step. Seen her first tooth. Paid the tooth fairy.

Been there when her mutation developed.

"Do? I don't know." she set aside the pad. "Party I guess. Friends and family."

Tony slid his hand across the screen, wiping it. "Just a party? Holly, you only turn thirty one once."

"What would you prefer?" And there was his snarkiness in her tone. "A trip to Paris to spend some of your billions?"

"Kid, do you know how much money you'd have to spend to put a dent in our family money?" He leaned back against the desk, crossed his arms over his chest with one eyebrow raised. "You could fly around the world, every day, for a year. Rent the most expensive hotel rooms in the world, every day for a year. Order the most expensive food you could eat every day for a year. Drink the most expensive wine, champagne or whatever you want every day for a year and still not put a dent in _our_ family's money."

She shifted a little, uncomfortable with that phrase. 'Our family's money.'

Dale Harper, his wife June, and Holly's mother Rosie were by no means poor but they had been staunchly middle middle class. Until Holly's mutation and the hospital bills began to roll in. Then Rosie got sick.

If he'd gotten one damn letter!

When Tony found out that Dale had footed the bill for Holly's stay in a psychiatric ward, of course he paid for it. Wiped the debt out. Paid for both of the mortgages on the Harper family home. It was the very least he could do after thirty years of being completely absent.

Dale was still warming up to him. After almost decking him for knocking up his fifteen year old daughter thirty odd years ago.

"I've never been to Paris." Holly said softly, "or outside North America really. I've been to Canada." She paused. "With Logan once."

"Anywhere you want to go. Anything you want to do. Anything Hol, just say it."

She smiled at him reaching out one gloved hand and taking his. "Thanks dad."

Tony's heart squeezed in his chest. She called him_ dad_.

He was still thinking about her birthday, and what he could do for her birthday when Panic! At the Disco began to play. Holly must have added one or two songs to the playlist before she left to get her ass kicked by a Russian. He didn't actually hate Panic!. He grumbled about not liking the band because Holly, last year (pre-battle), opted out of a father daughter night of b-horror movies and pizza to go with Rogue and Stringbean to a concert. She did make it up to him with a full rewatching of the new Star Trek movies.

Tony, grinning to himself, had an _amazing_ idea.

* * *

Holly was never going to be a fighter the likes of which some of the other mutants/humans she knew. That seemed to be a given thing as she looked up from the floor at Natasha, swallowed blood from biting her tongue accidentally and said, "I suck."

Natasha held out one gloved hand to Holly's own gloved hand. "All the muscle in the world does nothing if you can't defend yourself."

Back aching like she just went a round with Wade, Holly pushed up into a sitting position. "Tell that to my husband." She said, and for a brief moment there she forgot - she didn't have a husband anymore. Logan, her Logan, had been having her work out three days a week in addition to having Natasha kick her ass.

Natasha tapped her cheek gently with a gloved finger. "Up. Again."

With a grunt of pain, up Holly went. "You know, when I asked you to help me learn to protect myself, beating my ass wasn't what I meant."

"You asked me to teach you to fight back. Defending yourself is irrelevant right now. Fix your leg."

Holly moved her dominant leg back into position. "I feel more comfortable-"

The gym door opened. Steve walked in just as Natasha swept Holly's legs and the brunette went down. "Distractions get you killed. Up. Again."

From the floor Holly sighed. "I think you're meaner now that you don't have an audience of kids fangirling and fanboying over you."

Natasha almost smiled. Almost. Her eyes crinkled a little and the corners of her mouth curled up the slightest bit. She got down on one knee next to Holly and helped the other woman up. "I'm going to go harder on you because now you don't have a school full of mutants and a half dozen other superheroes to go through before someone gets to you and the twins. The odds aren't in your favor in Stark Tower. All someone has to do is wait until you leave the building." She squeezed Holly's hand once. "One more time and fix that leg."

Holly nodded, putting her footing back into position. "Okay, okay. Show me again." For the next hour Natasha ran her ragged. It was a combination of styles, a piece of this, a bit of that. Something that she felt like she saw in those Kung Fu movies Kurt liked, and she was pretty sure there was Capoeira in there somewhere.

"You have one advantage I don't." Natasha said finally handing Holly a bottle of water.

Holly, flopping against one wall, "Yeah, what's that?"

"You only need to touch someone once to put them down."

With a wry smile, "Yeah, turning someone's brain into swiss cheese is a real bonus." She swallowed a half dozen times, the bottle cracking and crinkling in her hand.

"When you're fighting to survive, putting your enemy down as fast as possible is what matters most." Natasha too sat down. "Have you ever tried incapacitating someone temporarily?"

Holly bowed her head. "I can't risk hurting someone that way. The brain," she circled her bottled water indicating Natasha's head, "is an extremely complex organ. If I touched you-"

"Not a good idea."

"Mmm, I gathered." She swallowed again. "I could grab some memories and shred them. You'd know that you were missing a memory, you would know there was something there before but you'll never remember what. When I take things, when I'm in there and offensively putting someone down - I'm basically destroying what makes them tick. Eventually their personality would change because they lack the life experiences that made them who they are. If I took everything. Every thread of what makes a person, they're a vegetable. Eventually they die because their body just doesn't remember why it works."

"No temporary fixes then."

Holly sighed and rubbed her forehead in a move Natasha had seen Tony do repeatedly. "Yes and no. If it's a thought, maybe a new memory that hasn't had time to convert into long term I can grab it and remove it. Like this. I could make you forget ever training me today. You'd come to sitting there, no idea where your time went."

Natasha didn't betray a single eyelash. She sipped her water and attempted not to think about all of the horrifying implications that came with Holly's mutation.

"There's a reason I'm borderline class five mutant Nat." Holly looked down at her gloved hands. "I'm dangerous as fuck when I get my hands on someone."

Natasha side eyed Steve, who had tensed when he heard Holly curse. "Careful Holly, the fossil doesn't like foul language."

Holly snorted. "Steve isn't a fossil yet. When he reaches Logan's age and still looks twenty-five, then we can start talking." She pushed up against the wall. "Just show me that move with the elbow and knee combo again. I feel like I can do that a lot faster once I get the movements right."

Natasha nodded. "One more, then you lift for half an hour. Legs today."

Holly groaned. "You're so mean."

"You'll thank me one day."

* * *

The next time Steve saw Holly was a day later. She had a run away baby making his way down the hall. "Tommy!" Holly snapped the clip on Jamie's side of the twin seat stroller. She turned away for one second to grab a wipe. God.

Steve, being Steve, scooped up the diapered bundle of chubby cheeks and pink limbs crawling past his door. The baby boy squealed in delight, clapped and then grabbed Steve's face in his wet hands. "Hey kid, where are you going?" He asked while walking the baby back to his mother.

"We _were_ going for a walk," Holly told him, giving him an apologetic look. She took the baby back and settled him back into the stroller with the harness clicking into place. "But someone is so excited he doesn't want to wait."

"And his hands are wet because?"

"Sorry!" Holly snagged a wipe and without thinking, because mom brain, grabbed Steve's face and began wiping at the spot where Tommy touched him. "Baby spittle."

With a small chuckle, he gently took the wipe from her. "I think I can get it."

Holly released his face. "Oh god. I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize Mrs. Harper."

"Holly," she corrected. "And technically it's Mrs. Logan. But, we're neighbors, and you're friends with my dad. You can call me Holly." She glanced down at the stroller, then herself and said, "I am forgetting something. Diaper bag, two kids, stoller… "

"Purse." Steve supplied.

She pointed right at him. "Oh you are good. Can you watch them for a second?"

"Sure. Take your time." Kids were on the list of things he was good at taking care of. He crouched in front of them, the one on the left was Tommy, so that meant the baby boy on the right was Jamie. He smiled at them both and began playing got your nose. Tommy reached out to grab Steve's hand, while Jamie watched with fascinated curiosity. Jamie thrust the red soft block he had been holding toward Steve. "Thank you." He tossed it up and caught it with one hand. The twins exploded into giggles and baby talk.

Unbeknownst to him, Holly had returned and was watching him. "You're good with kids."

He caught her eye over the edge of the stroller top. "I like children. The younger they are the easier they are to please." He handed Jamie back the soft cube. The boy gurgled at him and went back to squeezing it.

"Thank you for your help. Again."

"You're welcome Holly."

She began to walk toward the elevators, then stopped. Holly turned back, "Hey, what are you up to today?"

"I was going to take a walk around the city." He said, "Try to see if I recognise anything."

"Want to come with us? I promise we're a lot more fun that wandering alone."

He opened his mouth to say a polite no thank you. Then he stopped. He'd been walking alone or riding alone on his bike for months. "If you don't mind the company."

"Of course not." She waved him over, "come on Cap. Let's go see Balto."

Balto, as it turned out, hadn't moved a single inch since the last time Steve had been to Central Park seventy plus years ago. Steve looked up at the metal cast on a mount. For once when someone said something, he'd known where to go. Jamie, the calmer of the two boys, sat in his arms as Steve pointed up at the dog.

"Doggie," he said to Jamie.

Jamie kicked small chubby pink legs and tried for it. He was only forming a handful of words, give or take. But he did try.

Holly spun around with Tommy. "Who's the biggest boy?" He kicked his legs and giggled wildly. "You are!" She booped his nose. "Did Steve take your nose? Did he?"

Steve looked over with a grin. "I gave it back."

"Good. Now mommy can eat your nose!" She planted a big kiss on her elder son's cheeks and forehead.

Jamie was going for Steve's face again. Baby hands patted his chin and cheeks. Steve went for a spin in place. Jamie squealed with joy. He tapped Steve's face again as if to ask to spin again. This time Steve went the other way. Jamie giggled, clapping.

"He really likes you."

Steve tapped the baby's nose. "I like him too."

"Wait, let me get a picture." Holly, balancing Tommy on one hip, fished out her cell phone and opened up the picture app. "Smile!" She double tapped as Steve cradled Jamie and smiled at the camera.

"Would you like one of all of you?" An older woman asked, beautiful darkened Grey hair and an equally distinguished looking husband in tow.

"Oh, um," Holly's green eyes found Steve's blue. He shrugged in response to her silent question. Most people didn't recognise him without the shield and uniform. "If you don't mind, that would be great. Thank you."

The woman smiled at them. "Say cheese." A handful of pictures taken, she held the phone back out.

Holly, gloveless, hesitated to take it back.

Steve reached out and retrieved the phone with a smile. "Thank you ma'am."

"Such a lovely couple." She said before walking away with her husband.

The red crept up Holly's neck at the same time Steve's ears and cheeks began to turn pink. "We should, um… where are my gloves?" Holly settled Tommy back into his seat and clipped him back in.

"Purse," he supplied once again.

She shook her head. "Seriously, I need you around more often." She snatched the thinner cream colored spring driving gloves from her purse and pulled them on before taking Jamie back from him. With Jamie strapped in, Holly took the phone back from Steve.

He watched as she gingerly tapped through the pictures with the thinner pad of her gloved index finger. "You can't touch anything, ever?"

"Oh I can touch everything if I want to bleed to death and go into convulsions." She told him with chagrin. "But no, not if I want to survive. I was working with Professor X for a couple of years to get my power under control. I can slow down and stop most of the transfer now, even see inside the person's mind if I'm touching them. I get impressions of the future, very, very rarely." You're rambling Holly. "Everything was made by someone. Everything has a memory attached. People are full of memories." She frowned a bit, putting her phone away. "I was born in the wrong century to have this power."

That was...horrifying. Steve had no other word for it. Feeling pain when being touched, every time you're touched. He looked down at the twins. Going through it to be married and have children.

"I can get used to people," she told him as if reading his mind. "Like my husband, most of my friends, and my dad." She let out a small chuckle. "I think I probably scared about a year off my dad's life when he gave me the okay to touch him for the first time. He saw my nosebleed and my eyes roll back into my head and nearly had a panic attack."

She tilted her head at him. "You want to keep going or go back?"

Fully aware she was giving him a plausible reason to leave, Steve never gave in to fear. "Where to next?"

Holly smiled at him. "Hans Christian Anderson, then Alice in Wonderland. Maybe lunch after?"

"Sounds good. Though I don't know where either of those are."

"Over to fifth, Hans is between East 73rd and East 74th. Then up to East 75th and back into the park, Alice and her friends are there."

Now those were directions he could follow.

Later that morning, "Wait," she said, "what do you mean you have a list?" The boys were sleeping soundly, tired from the day. Holly was tired too, and they stopped to sit at a bench under the shade of some trees overgrowing the park's stone walls. She took apart a large soft pretzel and handed him half.

"Thank you." Steve pulled out a small black notebook and handed it to her. "I started making a list of things I need to catch up. People talk about something and I don't get the reference or don't have a clue."

Her head bobbed as she thumbed passed some crossed out things. Then she started giggling wildly. "You put, oh my god, every nerd in the world would murder you." She tapped the Star Wars/Trek on the last page. "These two fandoms are in a war of the ages. And you put them next to each other!"

Frowning down at the pages, "Why?"

"Because Star Wars is epic and Star Trek is epic and apparently people just can't get along when there are two epic fandoms in existence. Trust me there were fandom wars online when Harry Potter movies came out at the same time Twilight movies came out."

"Who is Harry Potter?"

Holly's eyes lit up. "You've never heard of Harry Potter?"

"We didn't really watch television or movie in my time. We read a lot, listened to the radio. Old habits die hard. I've been spending most nights reading books that Banner loaned me."

She knocked her shoulder into his. "You're in luck. Not only do I own all of the Harry Potter books so you can borrow them, I also own all the movies."

He pulled the pen from his back pocket. "I'll add it to the list." He wrote in Harry Potter with the word series/movies in parenthesis.

"Want to come over for dinner and watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone?"

"Tonight?"

"Absolutely. Come on, let's head back, these two are going to wake up soon and I'd rather they not be grumpy."

* * *

Trying to jog the other Logan's memories was turning out to be fruitless. Everything that belonged to Holly had been removed the day she moved out. The day he woke up. He had her scent on the pillows and on his clothes and not much else. He got to keep the cribs only because the cajun couldn't get them the day she left. Speaking of, there he was.

"You," Remy said from the open doorway, "look like a man who doesn't know which end is up."

A pillow hit the wall over the bed. "You want somethin'?"

"No, mon ami, but I think you do."

Logan glared at him. "Yeah? What do I want from you?"

"Help getting your wife to fall for you again." Remy waved off the angry look shot in his direction. "The Professor spoke to some of us. Explained why Holly left you. Makes sense, you look like her husband but you're not her husband. But you still got him up here," Remy tapped his own temple, "no?"

Some of the anger drained from Logan. "What's it to you?"

"One, Logan was my friend, two, Holly is my friend. She's also the only one that Marie likes to talk about relationships." And if he got Holly to talk to Rogue about this crap with ice-balls, maybe he'd get her back.

Logan gave him an impatient, irritated glare.

"Mon ami, right now, if you had not guessed; I know more about your relationship and sex life than _you_ do."

Logan looked the cajun up and down. They were friends? Then again, he was married. He had kids. Stranger things had happened in this other timeline.

Remy ignored the way Logan was looking at him. His friend was supposedly still up there somewhere in that thick skull. "First date, very simple. Dress shirt. Blue preferably, Holly's favorite color. Nice slacks, the kind you probably only wore on your wedding day so go buy new ones. She'll know if you're wearing the other ones. You make a reservation somewhere nice, not too nice. Holly doesn't like money even if her father has more than God ever intended a human being to have. I'll teach you something about ordering wine, but your woman can shoot whiskey. Bad habit she picked up from you. Never learned to like the cigars though." He gave Logan a pointed look.

Logan, glowering, removed the unlit cigar from the corner of his mouth.

"You have children, the old Logan, he kicked the habit."

That explained having no ashtrays and why he had to go buy cigars.

"Listen, because I only say this to you once. You have the perfect woman. She's smart, she's kind, she's a good person, she is funny, she likes sex as much as you do, and she willingly gave you," he said the word you with a pointed finger, "children. If you fuck this up for my friend that might still be in your head, I will personally kick your ass and I know about two dozen others willing to help. That includes Deadpool. He will slice the parts that hurt the most. Holly deserves better than you, but she likes you. Only God knows why."

"Mystery of the universe." Logan muttered.

"Oh and you take the bike to your first date."

Logan side eyed him. "The bike?" What bike?

"The vintage Harley the other Logan restored. You drive that down."

"Why the bike?" Not that he was arguing.

"Because Holly likes something big, powerful and fast between her thighs. Probably why she puts up with you."

"Yeah smartass, and how do I get her to go out with me? I had to fight her not to sign divorce papers today."

Remy tapped his chest. "You've got your own Cyrano, mon ami. And I am here to help."

Who the hell was Cyrano?

* * *

Steve stared at the credits, Holly having paused it. "No, no, wait." He had to watch the volume of his voice. The boys were sleeping in the bedroom. "I thought that Snape was the bad guy?"

Holly, much too entertained by his reaction, giggled into one hand. She snagged his plate off the coffee table. "Do you want more pie?"

He stood, "I'll help you."

Rolling her eyes she very gently pressed her gloved hand against his chest. "Sit down soldier. I'm just grabbing the last slice. We can split it."

Ever the gentleman he reached around her and grabbed the paper plates. "My mother taught me not to sit while the host works."

"Well, who am I to question the wisdom of your mom?" Steve went for the semi-full containers on the counter from the restaurant, and Holly began dumping the plates and empty containers.

"What do you want to do with this?" He asked holding up the chicken and broccoli.

"All yours. I can't eat meat."

Pausing for a moment he came to a realization that made him slightly green around the gills. "You'd see everything about the animals life."

"Including the day and the way they died."

He suddenly did not want the chicken and broccoli anymore. He decided to refrigerate it for now. Later he could take it back to his place and throw it away. "Where did you order this from?"

"Small hole in the wall chinese japanese fusion. Takes thirty minutes to deliver, but worth it." She pulled the pie from the fridge as he brought over the other containers. "This comes from Magnolia's Bakery. I don't know what they put in it but it is amazing and it doesn't trigger off anything. Someone working there must be a null." When he looked at her questioningly Holly said, "There are mutants with the ability to nullify other people's powers. It's not a super rare mutation, and it is one of the few that tends to repeat. There's a boy at the school with that ability." Jimmy would graduate this year. God. Jimmy was graduating and going off to college...and she wouldn't be there to see it.

Steve put the rest of the food in the refrigerator.

Holly slid one large knife though the last slice. "I should have just ordered a whole pie, but I didn't think we'd eat that much."

With a bashful smile, he bowed his head a little. "If I'm hungry enough I can devour a whole buffet in under an hour." Hands in his pockets, he gave her a sheepish shrug. "Super soldier."

"Right, next time you come over I will buy a whole pie." She held out a metal fork to him. He hesitated to take it. The other fork he'd been using was plastic. "It's fine, all I'll see you enjoying a pie if I ever use that fork again. Tiny memories like that don't hurt. They're just," she searched for the word, "a small look into other people's moments of time."

Carefully, even though her hands were gloved, he took the fork. "But a glass of water would have hurt."

Holly pushed herself up onto the counter next to the pie while his hip settled just on the other side. "Mmm, how many times have you used that cup? Once, okay probably wouldn't hurt. Twice, I might get something you were thinking about at the time, or a memory of what you were doing while drinking. Three, four, five, two dozen, everything compounds. People infuse their things with their daily lives without knowing it. I'm not used to you, and you're older than the average person that I've touched. That could have ended with you calling my dad because I was having a seizure and lost a pint of blood. Then he'd get pissed off at you and there would be a civil war in Stark Tower."

She waved her fork in the air with a stabbed piece of apple. "You need to be okay with me touching you first, and me seeing things you may not want me to see. I can control the flow, slow it down, but I will see things you might not want another person knowing." She pointed the fork at him. "When you're ready, you can tell me. I'm big on consent with my power. I have to be. Everyone has a secret they'd like to keep. I have no right to peek into another person's head, let alone life, without their express consent. I used to tell people to put things they didn't want seen behind a wall or door in their mind, but that was contributing to how negatively my power impacted me. Now I see everything."

He thought about it as they ate the last of the pie. He didn't have a lot of secrets. None, really, save the one that most historians had figured out from the video of him with Peggy's picture in his watch. Setting the fork down. "How does it work?"

Very slowly, Holly set her fork down too. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"If I get a nosebleed or my eyes roll back into my head, don't freak out. That's normal. I'll be fine. We should sit."

"Couch." He said.

"Yeah, good choice."

They returned to the couch with the paused credits from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. "Okay, so," her heart beat kicked up. Holy shit. This was happening. Granted he wasn't as old as Logan, and she had much more control over her powers. "Clear your mind as best you can. I'm going to get a dump of your thoughts with the memories." Holly pulled off one glove. "Ready?"

He put his hand out again. She shook her head with a small smile. He dropped his hand. "Arm?"

Almost shyly, biting her lip, Holly reached across and let her palm hover over his left side jaw. She waited for him to nod at her and then, very gently cupped that side of his face. "The face is better, closer to the source- oh." Her eyes did roll for less than a second and a drop of blood did appear just below the line of her nose above her lip.

It didn't hurt. No, that's not right. It did hurt, a little bit, but not like touching other people. His mind wasn't a jumble of memories and thoughts that fell together incoherently. Everything was almost orderly and tidy. It was like… like walking through a neat and well kept home. Everything in its place. There were some cobwebs over older memories, fresher ones like the battle last year were vibrant and colorful like digital art, and a large, almost cavernous black area that started at- Oh god.

Holly sobbed when her eyes came back to normal.

Steve almost started to ask if she was alright, but he didn't move. He wanted to. The urge to put a hand on her arm and ask if everything was okay hit him hard. She dropped her hand then leaned over to hug him.

"I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Steve."

He froze, not knowing what to do. Hugging wasn't something people back in his time. "For what?"

She pulled back, sniffing but not wiping off the tiny drop of blood. "I saw when you went into the ice. When you realized that might be it for you. That was," she swallows hard. Holly shook her head and wiped at her eyes. "No one should ever know what that feels like."

He barely remembered that. Being cold, being in the dark, knowing hypothermia was going to set in quickly. Then, nothing. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let you-"

She hugged him again without warning. "Shut up Rogers. Okay? Just take the sympathy."

Carefully his arms wrapped around her. He took the sympathy.

Somewhere a phone started ringing. Holly pulled back. "That's me. One sec." She got up, long skirt swishing as she walked.

Steve realized he'd never seen her wear jeans. Leggings under a somewhat shorter skirt that went to her knees like when she was moving in. Sweatpants that one day he saw her in the gym. He made a mental note to ask.

"Hi," her voice was soft. "I have a guest over, can I… a date? Like a date, date? Where you actually wear something other than a t-shirt and boots?"

Steve heard her go quiet for a moment.

"Friday night. Dress up? Logan you don't own... okay, okay. No, I mean, yes. Friday, eight thirty. See you then." Holly hung up bewildered. She and Logan hadn't dated. Ever. They were acquaintances, he had a thing for her, then lovers, that was it. He'd taken her out a handful of times after they were married to a diner or once a really quaint bed and breakfast where they nearly broke the bed. And the shower. They did actually break a desk. She set the phone down on the counter where it had been and went back to the living area. "Sorry, my husband."

How did he forget that she was a married woman? The lack of ring threw him off, and when she removed her gloves she hadn't been wearing one. Was that her mutation or leaving her husband? He cared because she was Tony's daughter and she was becoming his friend. "Everything okay?"

"Yes, well, I mean, yes but…" her brows furrowed. "Did you talk to my dad at all? Or Doctor Banner?"

"Not since a day or two before you moved in."

Holly brushed an errant tendril of hair out of her eyes. "Good thing you're already sitting. This one's a doozy." She turned off the dvd player and the tv at the same time. "Do you know what an alternate timeline is?"


	6. Chapter 6, Wherever I Go:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter...rating change maybe? Possibly? Might be? I dunno. Depends. Maybe you guys want that, maybe you don't. Sound off if you want that?
> 
> Remember, this is not the same MCU in the movies. Things will change because there are X-Men here. :)

One Republic - Wherever I Go

Sarah Hartman - Monster Lead Me Home

Taylor Swift - I Know Places

The Chainsmokers - Something Just Like This

Jonas Brothers - Sucker (dude my comment on this has nearly 500 likes! see if you can find it.)

DNCE - Cake By the Ocean

Tegan & Sarah - Closer

Set It Off - Midnight Thoughts

* * *

Chapter 6, Wherever I Go:

Nervously, Holly patted lipstick onto her upper and lower lips with her ring finger. Logan, or at least her Logan, liked the red lip thing. A little mascara, shimmery green liner in a baby wing to bring out her eyes, and a vibrant red lip. God bless cruelty free, and vegan brands.

She went for a dress too, black, stopping just below the knee. Holly broke out her opera gloves (custom made, thanks dad), the ones that went up to her elbows, also in black. Nude stockings, low black heels. She tried for curling her hair a little but only got some semi-beachy looking waves in return.

"You're going to call if you're going to be late." Tony said, holding Jamie. "And if he so much as tries anything, you call me or Pepper."

Pepper, falling into the role of about to be the step-mother of a thirty year old, helped to rangle Tony when he started in. "Tony, Holly is old enough to-"

"I know, but a gentleman would come up stairs and meet me first."

"You've met Logan, Tony." Pepper supplied.

"Not this Logan. Different timeline, different man."

There was in fact a knock at the apartment door. Holly answered, fully expecting Logan. It was not Logan. Steve stood there instead, holding the first two Harry Potter books she loaned him Wednesday after the movie.

His brain misfired for a second, which was something considering his brain wasn't supposed to do that. Holly looked...the word pretty seemed to be not enough. Elegant. "Hi," he said awkwardly aware that he had been staring at her.

"Rogers," Tony, oblivious, called from the kitchenette, "You're an old timey gentleman type. Please tell my daughter that a gentleman would come upstairs and meet her family."

Mildly confused, "What?"

Holly sighed. "My husband and I are attempting a date. My father," she cast a glare over her shoulder at Tony, "is making up for lost time and going overboard on the overprotective bit."

Oh. That made sense. He bypassed getting into it. "I brought back the first two books."

Holly took them back with a big smile. "Do you want Prisoner of Azakaban, or are you done?"

"I'll take the next one. They're quick reads."

"Yeah, until book four sucker punches you." Tony said, joining them at the door. "And book five slaps you then kicks you while you're down. By book six, even_ I_ cried. Don't talk to me about book seven. I'm still angry."

Steve tried to picture Tony crying. Or angry with a book. The images just didn't seem to want to come together. Somewhere beyond the doorway a phone buzzed with an unfamiliar upbeat song. Something about where is the love in...he flushed a shade of pink. He'd known music had changed but that was new.

Holly vacated the doorway to grab it before her father could start up again. She picked up while taking the books back to the shelf.

"I hate Panic at the Disco." Tony muttered. He let Steve in and handed him Jamie. The baby snuffled a little figuring out a comfortable spot, then reached up to touch Steve's face.

"Hi, are you nearby?" Holly asked.

"Downstairs." There was a rumble of an engine in the background.

Holly bit her lower lip in anticipation. "You brought the bike?"

"I brought the bike." He confirmed. Remy was right if the interest in her voice was any indication.

Tony gave Steve a significant look. "She's too much like me with fast things."

Holly shot him another glare and mouthed, Be quiet! "I'll be down in a minute or two." She grabbed her jacket, sweater and clutch after ending the call. "I'll be home by midnight, I promise, no pumpkins or mice in my pockets." She planted an air kiss by Tony's cheek and then one by Pepper's.

She gently relieved Steve of Jamie who had been gurgling at him and touching his nose. Holly handed Jamie back to Tony. "Don't foist the boys off on unwitting help." Holly pressed kisses to both boys. "Mommy's going out." Neither seemed to mind or care too much.

Tony scowled, or at least tried to. "He knew what he was walking into."

Holly grabbed the third book off a shelf and handed it Steve then hooked her arm around his. "Come on soldier, walk a girl to the elevator so her father doesn't try to." She pulled the front door behind them. "You really don't have to," she said in a low tone.

"No, it's fine. I was going to anyway. Dangerous hallways here in Stark tower."

"Oh the snark Cap, I like it."

The elevator came and they both got on. Holly's eyebrows went up. "And where are you going?"

"Crossing one off the list. Cuban food."

"Ropa de vieja, and Fried plantains called maduros. You can thank me later."

"I'll add it-" He began.

"To the list." She finished for him.

A private laugh between friends.

"You know, a gentleman would have come up to get you." He felt like he needed to say it.

"Mmm," she nodded, "but a smart man doesn't leave his vintage motorcycle unattended on the streets of Manhattan."

She made a good point. The elevator came to the ground floor, Steve put his hand out. "Ladies first."

"Thank you," she stepped out and he followed.

In the foyer there was the evening security guards, Bill and Jack. Steve waved at them. He noticed Holly did too. The evening receptionist, Amanda, wasn't at her desk. Steve felt a tiny, if a bit guilty, wash of relief. He'd already said no to her advances. Twice.

Holly nodded to a man on a motorcycle just outside. "That's Logan. Do you want to meet him?"

"No helmet?" He asked as they walked toward the revolving doors.

"He has one, he just doesn't like using it. Besides, his mutation is regenerative. Even if he was thrown off and got hurt, he'd be up and repaired in minutes."

"I have to talk to Bill," he said, though it wasn't the absolute truth. He did have to talk to Bill, but it could have waited. Had Steve been more honest with himself, he might have realized why he didn't want to meet the man who Holly was trying to get to know again. He liked having someone to talk to.

She patted his shoulder gently. "Enjoy dinner!" Then she going outside.

Steve watched through the window while she wrapped her scarf around her hair and then donned the helmet. Logan helped her onto the bike, and to be honest Logan looked a lot older than Holly. Older than Tony. The bike sped off into the night with the familiar roar of an engine.

* * *

There was a sneaking suspicion in her head that this date wasn't all Logan's idea. Her husband's idea of romantic was their weekend getaway to Lake Erie and camping in Presque Isle. She'd been pregnant at the time, around four months so it wasn't entirely as fun for her as it was for him. More like uncomfortable in the humidity. Though crossing off sex under the stars (repeatedly) from her bucketlist had been fun. The water had been nice and going to Sarah's for greasy food was good too. Picassos on their last day was **mind**-**blowing**.

Her reasoning came from a couple of very specific clues. The first, when she chose a vegetarian dinner for herself and appetizer he'd been surprised. It was all over his face. The second, when he saw the prices, he balked. She could almost hear him swearing mentally at the person who gave him the idea. Third, the robin's egg blue dress shirt was not one of her husbands'. That was either new or borrowed. Fourth, and final, he asked her what kind of wine she wanted to drink.

Logan, much like Dracula, didn't drink _wine_. They had a bottle of Tennessee Rye for those nights when they couldn't go out, but wanted something to share in bed. Besides a half dozen orgasms and dirty talk.

"A dry riesling," she said and waited for him to figure out what that meant.

Remy. She'd put every penny of her father's money on it. She loved the cajun, she did. He was a romantic at heart, but he was also a nosey asshole. She took her phone out, and typed with the heat sensitive pads of her gloves to Rogue, _Your ex is meddling in my marriage_.

Her phone buzzed less than a second later. _He's a dick._ Followed by a frowny face. Her phone buzzed again. _Ivy said she'll yell at him later._

_Let him know next time, I'll call Wade._

_LOL. Nice._

Holly settled her phone back where it was.

"Checking on the kids?" Logan asked feeling uncomfortable in the monkey suit. At least he didn't have to wear a tie.

"No." And that was all she said. She sipped the white wine and watched him over the edge of the glass.

"You don't eat meat?" He asked.

She set the glass down, "No."

He was drowning here. "Why'd you agree to go out with me if you don't want to talk to me?"

Without breaking eye contact Holly held up one hand and slid off the glove. She put her arm out, but not on the table, palm up. "What else did Remy tell you to do tonight?"

Shit. "You like the Professor?"

"No, but I don't need to be to remember he tends to meddle." She curled and uncurled her fingers. "I'm psychometric." Holly nodded at her hand. "One of the more specific psychic abilities. I touch you and I know everything you did today, yesterday or might do tomorrow." Then she waited patiently for him to take the hint.

Hesitantly, Logan put his corresponding hand out to her and curled his fingers around hers. He'd only seen her do this once. At the time hadn't been paying much attention beyond the strange woman grabbing his hand and having a convolution with a nosebleed. This time she didn't convulse, just like in the elevator.

Her eyes rolled up to the whites for about a second, then she let go of his hand. "I'm going to beat his ass black and blue," she muttered and began to pull back on the glove. She removed a hankie from her clutch and dabbed at her nose.

Blood stained it white.

"Do you bleed every time you touch someone?"

"Every time." She told him.

"How the hell did we have kids?"

"We had sex without using birth control. In a car. My leggings were a mess with you and me all over them when we got back to the school."

The couple next to them stared at her. Logan, had he been someone easily embarrassed, probably would have asked her to keep her voice down. He wasn't though. "Go back to your food." He said to the guy. Logan turned his attention back to the woman he was married to. "The kids weren't a plan."

"No, but it wasn't like they were unwanted. We were together. Period. You had an engagement ring for me. Even made sure it was all ethically sourced so I wouldn't have a horror show in my head when you did give it to me."

His gaze dropped to her fingers. No ring. He met her eyes wordlessly.

She pointedly nodded at his ring finger. "Neither of us are jewelry people. I wear them for special occasions and when I'm out with my friends. I may not be your type, but I am a lot of other men's type."

An image came back to him. A memory. Holly sitting on a bar stool in his - no they're favorite haunt by the school. Evergreen eyes on him playing pool. Some kid, probably twenty something from one of the colleges in the area offering to buy her a drink. Logan watching from the pool table with a knowing smirk. His wife could handle herself.

'Hey,' the kid said to the bartender, 'get the lady another.'

'No thank you.' Remy was right, she did sip whiskey.

Undeterred, 'I'm Paul.'

'I'm married.' She held up her hand with the solid white-gold band.

He looked around. 'Don't see your husband anywhere.'

'Didn't see the big guy at the pool table? Leather jacket, white t-shirt, jeans, boots that could stomp your ass into the ground?'

The boy shook his head and leaned on the bar next to her. 'He left you alone to play pool? I'd never do that.'

Logan hit the eight ball a little too hard. It made a cracking sound that caused a lull in the conversational din. Didn't disturb Paul though.

'Paul, you don't seem to be taking my not interested cues at face value, so let's try this again. Tonight, I'm going to go home with my husband. We're going to pay the babysitter and then he's going to make me come at least three times before we go to sleep. I might even give him head first. Do you see how you're oedipal complex features nowhere in my night?'

Logan, having won, dropped his pool cue on the table and made his way over to his wife. The kid, at least half a head shorter than Logan, less broad with the survival instincts of a suburban flatscan looked up at him stinking of fear. He looked down at the boy and said gruffly, 'Beat it.'

The kid went. Tail between his legs.

Logan took the seat the boy had been occupying. 'Just three times?'

She put both hands on his thighs and leaned in to brush her lips against his. 'I could have told him about your recovery time being ninety seconds, but I didn't want to completely break his ego.'

He took the initiative, pulling her into his lap, the barstool protesting under them. One hand in her hair, tilting her head back, making her moan into his mouth. They were that couple and he was damn proud of it.

A hand waved in front of his face. "Where'd you go?"

His brow furrowed, the bar was called O'Malley's in his timeline. "You and me go to a bar by the school?"

"Mahoney's, yeah, sometimes on a Saturday night when we can get a babysitter."

Again with biting her lower lip. Something in his brain went haywire whenever she did that. He could feel himself getting hard. He would have bet all the money he had on her doing that when he was inside her.

"Why? Did you remember something?"

"Something," he said right before he spotted the waiter with their food. Why the hell he paid so damn much for parking and dinner, he had no clue.

After they left the restaurant and he asked, "You want to go back to Stark tower?"

"What, you're taking me home already? I thought this was a date? Aren't you supposed to try to get into my pants or something?"

"You want me to?"

"I have no idea how this works. I've never done this before."

"We didn't date?"

"No. We knew each other because we teach together. You thought I was kind of hot, but antisocial, thorny and sometimes rude. One thing led to another and we both realized that we wanted this to go somewhere so you kept on touching me and I let you." She rolled her shoulders as they waited for the valet. For her it was their history. How they lived and loved. Their version of normal.

For him it was: What the fuck had the other guy been thinking? Logan didn't enjoy hurting people. He defended himself, he defended others, but he didn't enjoy it. What made the other guy want to be with a woman he had to hurt every single day?

His bike rumbled low rough as the valet, who clearly enjoyed driving it, pulled up. Holly's scent shifted as she bit her lower lip. She got hot for the bike, huh? He could work with that.

He grabbed the keys and tipped the guy a five. She was already winding that pink scarf around her head and neck. "You want to go for a ride?"

The way he said _ride_. Holly felt her bits go warm. "Maybe."

He held out the helmet to her. "That's not a no."

She put the helmet on, then climbed onto the bike behind him. Her fingers locked over his middle. "You're right, it wasn't."

Logan merged and took off into the late Friday evening traffic of Manhattan. Her thighs tightened against his, her arms flexing as she leaned into the turns with him. Her hands moved and for a moment he could have sworn she was teasing him. Then he slowed for a red light and her hands stopped. He glanced at her over one shoulder, but the helmet made her expression unreadable. The light turned green and they were off again. The teasing started up again a breath later. The fingers of one hand drew a lazy circle around his navel and the other drew agonizingly slow lines down his chest and stomach. If she wanted to play, he would play.

Disappointed, Holly pulled off the helmet when the bike stopped outside Stark Tower. Some ride. She got off the bike. That didn't-

Logan, in a very fast move pulled her to him. He ducked his head and gave her a rough, bruising kiss as payback for teasing him. When he pulled back her dark green eyes were unfocused. He nipped her lower lip once. "Invite me up."

God she loved it when he got aggressive, and spoke to her with that low rumbling almost but not quite growl. Her knees nearly gave. She wet her lower lip right where he bit her and said, "Come up stairs?"

He started to get off the bike.

"Parking garage."

Logan gave her a look.

"The bike. You have a spot down in the sublevel. We can take the private elevator back up once your parked." Then she added with a quick jump in her heartbeat, "For the night."

He held the helmet back out and Holly got back on. She gave him directions to the lower level with the Tony Stark fleet of cars that probably cost enough to rebuild the tower twice over.

She wasn't kidding. He had his own parking spot. It had his _name_ on it.

What he didn't count on was Holly's daze of desire clearing out for a more rational, if still moderately hot and bothered state of mind. She smoothed her skirt and unwound the pink scarf while he parked after stopping to let her off. Holly made a few decisions during the couple of minutes it took to do that.

She was not going to sleep with him for one. For another, if he wanted to stay, he could sleep on the couch in the living area. Holly watched him climb off the bike with her lower bits humming about that fine ass of his. Maybe she'd let him get to second base.

Then he gave her that look. The one where he was quite clearly trying to picture her without clothes. Maybe third base.

She held out her hand to him and he took it. Holly lead him around a wall, and pulled off her right hand glove. "Evening Jarvis." She put her other hand on a scanner that appeared when that British guy spoke through whatever speaker was above them.

"Good evening Holly."

Logan looked around for the cameras. They were either so small he couldn't see them or they were well hidden.

The elevator dinged as it opened.

"Would you like me to inform Mr. Stark that you've both returned?"

"No, thank you Jarvis."

"Who is that guy?" Logan asked.

Probably second base and no further. "Jarvis, Logan's had some memory issues lately. Would you please reintroduce yourself?"

"Good evening Logan, I am Jarvis, Just A Rather Very Intelligent System."

Dumbfounded, "He's an AI?"

Maybe not even second base. The private elevator was faster than the average elevator. Two minutes and they were on the habitat floor.

Logan noticed that she'd lost that heat in here eyes by the time they stepped off the elevator.

"Last door on the left." Holly supplied in a low tone. "My dad and Pepper babysat tonight so the boys are probably already asleep." She put her key in the lock but found the door opening up from the inside.

The last person she expected to see was Steve. Her brow furrowed, "Did my dad wrangle you into babysitting?" She asked in a whisper.

He put his finger to his lips, and ticked his head toward the couch. Tony and Pepper were asleep, her head on his chest and a number of toys and stuffed animals scattered on the floor and couch around them. Holly took out her cell phone and began snapping pictures.

Logan, however, stood next to the other guy warily.

Holly smiled at the other guy once she was done with taking pictures. "How did you get drafted into babysitting? I thought you went out?"

"I came by afterwards," the guy said, "and your father handed me Jamie again. Tommy gave them a run for their money."

"Yeah, he's fussy sometimes." She dragged the scarf off her neck. "They're both down for the night?"

"Around ten thirty," the blonde guy said equally quiet.

"And you survived how?"

"Jamie has to be the most well behaved, sweet kid I have ever met. I read him a book and gave him a bottle."

"That's because he takes after me. Tommy," she put one hand on Logan's chest, "takes after his father."

The blonde guy put out his hand to Logan. "You must be Holly's husband Logan. I'm Steve Rogers."

Logan shook the offered hand, applying a little extra pressure than he needed to. He was making a point. Or rather he was making his territory. He did not expect to receive equal pressure in return and a very steady gaze from blue eyes that said _try me_.

Holly, of course, was completely oblivious to it. She was crouched by her father. Gently she tapped her dad's nose with her ungloved hand. "Hello sleepy head," she murmured to the dark eyes that opened. "The princess is back from the ball."

"Holly," Tony blinked a few times remembering he was sleeping on his daughter's couch. "How did it go?"

"Logan's going to crash on the couch tonight so he can spend the day with the kids tomorrow."

Pepper, now awake, yawned. "All of the guest rooms are on the twentieth floor are all unoccupied. They're probably a lot more comfortable than a couch."

Tony almost kissed her. He didn't have to be the obvious cockblock. When Pepper sat up, he did too. "What time is it?"

"Five after eleven."

Good. She was home early.

"Thank god tomorrow is Saturday." Pepper said rubbing one eye.

"Hey, babysitting my kids is good practice for you two. You'll know what to do when you finally get around to giving me a sibling."

Both of them went completely still. Pepper had the grace to blush.

Holly tapped her own temple. "This wizard sees all and knows all."

Steve smiled a little. He got that reference.

It might have happened because they touched her both at once. Or it might have happened because she had alcohol, and her powers were less constrained than they were when she was sober. Either way, when Tony pressed a kiss to her forehead to say good night, and Pepper touched her bare arm before giving her cheek a kiss Holly got a glimpse of their future.

Her little sister Morgan. The wavy hair did come from her father's side of the family. Unlike Holly, the little girl's hair was lighter brown. Probably because her mother was a strawberry blonde where Holly's mother had been a sandy blonde. Brown eyes, and a tiny smattering of freckles. She wouldn't be able to pronounce Holly's name until she was about three. Before that was mostly 'lee' and no hol.

"Morgan," the name fell from Holly's lips a half second before her eyes rolled up into her head.


	7. Chapter 7, Bad Liar:

Selena Gomez - Bad Liar

Imagine Dragons - Bad Liar

Sarah Hartman - Monster Lead Me Home

The Chainsmokers - Something Just Like This

5 Seconds of Summer - Easier

lovelytheband - maybe I'm afraid

OneRepublic - Rescue Me

Ella Henderson - Ghost

* * *

Chapter 7, Bad Liar:

Her morning headache was one for the ages. At least she wasn't hooked up to a beeping machine with an IV line. She woke up in bed, alone, still in last night's dress. Oh great. She probably looked like she'd just done the walk of shame. She breathed in and felt the blood crusting in her nose begin to flake. The kids. She pushed out of the bed and caught herself with one hand on the wall.

"Hey," Logan's voice came from the doorway, then suddenly next to her, "easy." He put the mug down on the nightstand while wrapping the other arm around her. "Easy, you had a serious bleed last night."

"Tommy and Jamie." Holly managed.

"Are with your dad and Pepper."

Immediately she relaxed and leaned on him. "This is not how I expected last night to go."

He chuckled, a low rumble in his chest, "Thought I'd at least get to second base."

She smacked his chest playfully. "I was thinking about it." She held onto him for support and set herself back on the edge of the bed. "My head feels like they hit me with a freight train."

"What did you see?"

Holly looked up at him with an eyebrow raised.

He indicated his head. "I remembered you'd done that before."

"Is that how you got the privilege of being here when I woke up?"

He grabbed the tea off the nightstand, "No. Had to pull rank for that one." He settled it in her hands. "Watermelon strawberry."

Her eyes lit up as she wrapped her hands around the cup. She sipped and made that small satisfied sound that he distantly remembered. Last night, her passing out, that brought back a hell of a lot. Like most of the time, he was one of three people who could touch her regularly without making her pass out. The other two being their twins.

"What does pulling rank mean exactly?" She asked after several sips and downing the liquid advil he supplied.

"Husband." He told her simply. "And I remembered what to do, who to call. Didn't lose my head when you started to bleed heavy." He wanted to brush back her hair and tuck it behind her ear, but refrained. Her power was always more sensitive right after she saw the future. "You didn't answer, what did you see?"

"A little girl."

Logan's stomach flipped and his adrenaline immediately kicked in. "You're pregnant?"

She gave him a scowl. "I'm still on birth control."

He knew that was supposed to mean something, but he just didn't remember what yet. "Not pregnant."

"No. I'm going to have a little sister." She sipped from the heavenly, if steeped a bit longer than she liked, tea in her cup. "Her name is Morgan, and she'll be conceived a few weeks after the twin's second birthday party." She brushed the hair away from her face. "Why? Did you want me to be pregnant?"

"I don't know." He told her honestly. "The part of him that's waking up, did, maybe."

She put the cup down on the nightstand. "Babies only highlight what's wrong with the relationship, not what's right. You are remembering things, though, right?"

"Pieces. Last night I just knew what to do. I caught you before you hit the floor, called Doc Mcoy, stayed up to check on you every thirty minutes."

Holly darted in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Or at least she meant to. He saw her coming and caught her lips with his. It happened fast. One moment they were sitting there the next she was pulling at the t-shirt he wore and he had her flat on the bed. Long fingers slid up her thighs, found the top of her pantyhose and began peeling them down. She raised her hips to let him. Nude stockings were off and forgotten on the floor a breath later. His shirt joined them after another moment.

While kissing her again Logan tasted blood, fresh blood not old. A small trickle of it had reached her upper lip. "You're bleeding." He sat back.

Holly grabbed a tissue off the nightstand. "It's fine, you probably haven't touched me since last night so," she indicated her nose. "I told you, if you want to be with me, this has to happen."

The words maybe we should stop, were on the tip of his tongue. He didn't enjoy hurting people. He didn't enjoy the idea of hurting the woman that was supposed to be his wife.

She pressed one hand against his stomach and slowly trailed it to the top of his pants. "If you want to stop, we can stop." She told him before flicking the button with her thumb.

"No condom," he told her, his voice rough. It gave him a good excuse to hit pause and attempt to think past the haze of - christ she smelled like she was ready to go.

"Birth control." She reminded him curling her fingers around the top of his pants.

In a nearly gargantuan effort of self control, "Best we stop before we do something you regret later."

With a sigh Holly flopped back onto the bed. "How exactly are you the voice of reason right now?"

"No goddamn clue," he muttered, his hands just did not seem to want to leave her parted knees though. Thumbs slowly working back and forth over the cloth that hadn't fallen. Maybe if he went down on her they wouldn't cross a line. Maybe she'd return the favor.

"I know that look. You're thinking about what we can get away with." She slid back, withdrawing her body from his. "You gave me that look every day of the waiting period after I gave birth."

Waiting period?

"Couples are supposed to wait a full four to six weeks before engaging in intercourse after having a child because of gross things and possible complications that I'd rather not remember." She slid off the bed. "We made it three and a half."

He leaned down and grabbed his shirt off the floor. "Yeah, then what?"

Holly stepped into him, took one of his hands and placed it firmly on her bottom. "Then we experimented with some new techniques and positions."

His mouth went dry. Bone dry. Logan's brain misfired repeatedly as he squeezed that cheek once, twice. "Get back on the bed." He croaked.

"No." She put hands on his bare shoulders and held him at arm's length.

"Holly," he almost sounded like he was begging.

"I'll get back on the bed," She took one step back, "and you can do exactly what you want to do to me as long as you want if you can answer one question."

He groaned. Logan tried to pull her closer but she didn't budge. "What question?"

"I'll even give you three, all you have to do is answer **one** of them."

He gave her a look of warning. The tether he had on his self control was frayed as it was and he was ten seconds from snapping.

"What is my middle name?"

It was like ice dousing him. He had no idea.

"What are Tommy and Jamie's middle names? Our sons. Tell me what they are?"

Logan's hand dropped from her. He, again, had no idea.

"When is my birthday?"

He silently pulled on his shirt.

Her hand came up, cupped one side of his face. "When you remember you can have me again." Her hand left him and she walked into the bathroom without looking back.

A cold shower helped them both get the hormones under control, but neither knew the other took one. Holly went upstairs to get the boys, Logan tried to figure out which tin had the shampoo in it. Come on. He glared down at the oval and round tins sitting there on the shelf of the shower like they'd answer him if he waited long enough.

It was something he should have known. He knew that much.

They both, despite the water, smelled faintly like her. Jasmin, lemon, agave and-

He was looking down at the white on black hand written sign. 'Eleven dollars for two ounces of shampoo. Darlin' there's gotta be something cheaper.'

Gloved fingers reached for a multicolored, multi tiered cut bar of soap labeled with a price tag reading seven plus dollars. 'There are, but remember what Hank said. The less chemical stuff I use the better off these two are.' She patted the small bump of her stomach.

He was still kind of floored that he actually got her pregnant. Two hundred plus years and he'd never, not once, gotten any woman he was with pregnant. And they'd gone and done it on the first try. Which was impressive by most people's standards.

Logan still remembered Holly stammering out to Hank and Doc Mac Taggart that previous to the afternoon driving back from JFK, she'd never had sex before Logan. She wasn't even sure she could take birth control and be okay. Holly had gripped Logan's hand with her smaller one and blushed a bright, furious red.

Hank pulled off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose and Doctor MacTaggert frowned deeply. Neither of them were an OBGYN. Holly had never even seen a gynecologist because she couldn't risk sitting on an exam bed a thousand other women had been on before her.

'I won't lie to either of you.' Hank told them. 'This pregnancy...if you choose to go through with it.'

Holly damn near crushed his hand with her grip. They hadn't had that conversation. He'd thought of bringing it up a thousand times since the morning in her father's kitchen in Malibu. The selfish part of him wanted her to go through with it. But, if she wouldn't, maybe couldn't do this then-

'It won't be easy.' Hank finished with a solemn glance to Logan.

'Your diet alone Holly barely sustains _you_.' Doctor MacTaggert picked up from there. 'You're going to have to eat more and frequently. The reason you've lost weight is your body is attempting to sustain the lives of the twins with what resources it has. Gain five pounds by the end of next week and I want ten more by mid-June. Eat a gallon of ice cream if you have to. Cake everyday. I don't care. Get your weight _up_.'

Holly lifted the bar to her nose. Her eyes closed and she sighed that soft slow sigh of hers. The one Logan heard when she was happy or content. Her dark hair loose in waves down her back. She grew it out because he liked her hair long.

She held the bar up to him, not under his nose knowing his sense of smell, but out enough that it wouldn't mingle with everything else in here. Plums, apples, oranges.

'Could you live with me smelling like that all the time?' Holly asked him with a small tilt of her head, dark strands falling into her green eyes.

He took the soap from her. 'Course I can.'

With the store watching, he could feel the eyes on them, Holly pushed up on her toes and pressed a brief kiss to his lips. 'I love you Logan.'

He put an arm around her waist, tugged her closer and kissed her soundly in return. Forget the audience. The woman having his kids loved him and he loved her too. He made the decision to ask her. That stupid ring was burning a damn hole in his sock drawer and had been for weeks. He'd ask her today.

Logan, with freezing cold water pelting him, picked up the small round tin and opened it with a rough twist. Two memories for the price of one. Hell of a start for the day.

* * *

Holly kept hold of the stroller. Not that Logan didn't try, but he couldn't remember how to set it up, and then the kids were getting cranky from not moving and...it was easier if he let her do it.

He sipped from a coffee cup as they walked through Central Park and mulled over Tony Stark threatening him while Holly dressed the boys.

'I liked Logan, he was too old for her but he made my daughter happy and he loved his kids. You, I don't know. I hate not knowing things. Ask my daughter. Drives me nuts. I want you to keep this in mind if you start thinking my daughter is a booty call away just because the other you was married to her. Even if you get past me and Jarvis, she lives on the same floor as Captain America and The Hulk. Cap's a pretty decent guy, so he might not completely wreck you unless you get pushy but Banner's a complete rage machine. I don't care what your bones are coated with, you'd be lucky to survive.'

Gloved fingers tapped his chin. "Earth to Logan." He looked down at her, those green eyes held a bit of amusement as she looked up at him. "Where'd you go?"

He could lie, but if she touched him, she would know he lied. "Your dad and the other guy, they get along?" He had an inkling that they probably weren't going to get along through this. Whatever this was.

She sighed deeply, a familiar sigh. It said she was tired and annoyed. "My father needs to mind his own damn business is what he needs to do." She nodded to a bench across from a vendor, next to a large open field area. "No, you, the other you, puts up with Tony because he loves me. Tony lives with it because I'm his daughter and he cares about me and I love my husband. My grandfather doesn't like the other you much either." She turned the stroller around letting the boys face them. "But then grandpa doesn't believe my dad is going to stick around, and he is absolutely certain one day you'd leave me."

Holly's throat tightened involuntarily. In a way, her grandfather had been right. Logan did leave her. She busied herself unstrapping Tommy and handing him to Logan.

Logan took the silence as a change in subject and, equally as carefully as he had done almost a week ago, held his son. The boy with big dark eyes and chubby pink cheeks wrapped up in a lot of layers to combat the colder temperature of January. The little knitted brown bear cap covering his ears and forehead settled back into place as Logan adjusted it. He swiped dark brown hair out of the boy's eyes as the kid smiled up at him and chewed on his sucker. "They need a haircut."

"Well I was taking them to get one a week or so ago but the proverbial," she mouthed shit, "hit the fan."

"The day I woke up." When he changed the world, he literally fucked up everything for them.

She nodded. "Pepper has the guy that does my dad's hair coming on Monday. Tomorrow I'm taking them to my grandfather. He hasn't got much time left and seeing his great-grandsons is a big deal."

The grandfather that he didn't know and didn't like the other guy. He'd probably hate him now. "Who's going with you?"

She settled Jamie in her lap, "You do, usually. I don't think it would be a good idea now though. Maybe I'll bring Steve. They can swap war stories or something."

Steve. Steve was the guy from last night. The one with the blue eyes that followed Holly as she walked around the apartment. "I'll go."

Jamie laughed at a bird flying over them. "No. You won't."

"You don't have to do this alone."

Hardened green eyes met his. "What is my grandfather's name?"

He took a long couple of silent minutes to say, "I don't know." Tommy took that moment to yank on his hair. "Ow, kid, what?" The boy clapped both hands on his face and laughed wildly like it was the funniest thing he'd ever done.

Maybe it was. Logan had no idea. It wasn't just his wife he needed to get to know. He had two boys who were almost a year old that he knew almost nothing about. Logan, who until that moment had forgotten next Saturday he didn't have the kids, "Can I see them next weekend?"

Her head bobbed a couple of times. "I can bring them to the mansion. Storm wants me to fill out exit paperwork or something like that."

Exit paperwork. "What if you do decide to come back?"

Holly sighed, flicking lint off the top of the stroller. "Then I'll want to do it right and not have a mess left behind to come back to."

"The whole weekend." He pressed.

She paused looking at him. "The whole weekend? And where do I sleep? In the dorms with some of the kids?"

He gave her a familiar heated glared. The one that said she damn well knew where he wanted her to sleep. "I'll sleep on the floor," he relented after she watched him silently. "There's a blowup bed somewhere in the mansion."

"You know it won't work. You're what, two feet from me and you're hyper aware of every movement I make? I'm the same. We wouldn't make it through the night without torturing each other." She bit her lower lip, looking down at her gloves.

She wasn't kidding. He was intensely aware of where she was, and her movements without trying to think about it. It was like his senses had gotten so used to tracking her every moment, he just did because she was breathing. Being alone in a room with her, knowing he couldn't touch her would drive him insane.

Holly settled Jamie back in the stroller and Logan mirrored her. They got the boys back in together, and for him at least, it was a familiar sensation. Like he'd done it a thousand times. He didn't have to look at her for a confirmation on which strap went where. He was so wrapped up in it, he almost missed her watching him.

"What?" He asked, looking at her looking at him.

"Come on, let's walk some more. They're spending a lot of time at daycare now that I work for my dad. I feel like they're not getting out enough."

They got up and walked some, passing Belvedere castle in the distance.

"I know you don't remember," Holly said while they walked, "but you and me we don't know how to stop touching each other. This, right now, the seperation, I think this is the longest we've gone without having sex since I gave you my virginity."

He nearly spat out his coffee. "You were a virgin? You're…" Sexy as hell (though still not his type). Good looking. Then he thought about it. Really thought about it. "But you can't be touched."

"Before the school I avoided everyone. I had myself committed to a psychiatric facility where they kept me on drugs twenty four seven for nearly a year." Holly shook her head, thinking about those times. How out of control her abilities were compared to now. "You know how the Professor is. He's always searching out new mutants with Cerebro. I went a little too long without my meds one night and he said I lit up on Cerebro like a spotlight. I'm a powerful psychic, or so he says. He and Storm came to see me, convinced me to get off the drugs and come to the school.

"They sent you to pick me up from the train station. My train was early or you were late, I can't remember why we missed each other. I bumped into you in the hall that afternoon and thankfully that shirt was new because it touched my skin. You were a little flirty with me later. I shut you down fast. I wasn't a people person then.

"You touched me by accident at the Halloween party a few weeks later and I downloaded everything. I mean, _everything_ in your head. I was out for nearly two days. When I came to, you were seriously pushing me to try to give you your memories back. I told you I wouldn't fry your brain.

"Eventually we went to dig up some information on who your family was, and had time to figure things out. You made it pretty clear you wanted me. Wanted to be with me. I told you that every single day you would have to hurt me, if just a little. That you would have to be okay with that.

"You weren't at first. But I started getting used to you, and you saw I was bleeding less and less. We compromised. You stopped pushing me to give you your memories, in exchange you got me. You wanted to do right by me, get a hotel room, light some candles, rose petals, all that romantic shit other women like."

"But you're not other women." He said it completely without thinking about it.

"No I am not."

"In a car."

"Oh yeah, you kept telling me to wait to get back to the school to make me feel good. This wasn't the plan. Etcetera." She sipped her own tea and gave him a knowing, almost devious smile. "But I know exactly which of your buttons to push and how."

He was fairly certain her **breathing** pushed one of his damn buttons.

"Sex was never our problem Logan. The emotional crap we were getting pretty good at though. Communication without using my power as a crutch, we were still working on."

"How was that?"

She unsnapped the glove on her left hand, peeled it off and held her hand out to him. "Pick a number between one and infinity."

"We should sit," he told her, remembering holding her body when she fell last night. Her eyes closed, body convulsing while her nose leaked arterial red. It wasn't a thought, reacting before she hit the floor.

"I'll be fine standing." She held her hand out patiently. "Besides, if I do fall, you always catch me."

He took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers.

Her eyes rolled for less than a second and she didn't bleed. "You didn't pick a number." But she saw his inner turmoil. Everything he was thinking. How much he wanted to bury himself inside her and not leave the room this morning or for the next week. That he wanted to remember. The other Logan, her husband, gave him a life to come back to. Something to hold onto. The hell if he was going to let everything slip away.

What did the other guy do to get her? What did he do right to make her stay? Women never stayed for him. He lost every single one of them. Or couldn't have them. How, how did the other guy get this lucky?

"He asked," she said softly, taking one step closer. "He asked me to be his. That's all you have to do."

It couldn't be that simple.

"It really is though." She told him with another step forward. There was a foot of space between them now. "Love me, and I'm yours."

She was reading his mind.

"And your emotions, how you're trying to wrack your brain to remember more about me." She brought his hand to her lips and kissed the back of it. "Keep trying. We're worth it."

* * *

Saturday evening he returned to the mansion around seven. Dinner was still going, there were kids scattered around the cafeteria and hallways talking when he passed it.

"Logan," the cajun called out, "hold up."

Logan did no such thing. He kept walking. Still the other man caught up to him.

"How did it go?" Remy asked. "You stayed over, so it must have gone well, no?"

"Slept on the couch." Logan told him without elaboration. He went to shove his gloves in his pocket and found Jamie's soft block in there. He forgot to give his son back the toy. He squeezed it thoughtfully.

"But she still wants you, no?"

Logan reached the top of the landing and began heading for his room. "I don't know."

"Mon dieu," Remy held out his hands, "What did you do? I told you, you call me if you're not getting anywhere."

"I don't need to - why am I talking to you about this?"

"Because you, or at least part of you, loves your wife. Now what did you do!"

Logan threw open the door to his rooms. "I can't remember her middle name. Or the boys middle names. I can't remember and she's -" He let out a frustrated, angry growl. "She's the most frustrating woman I have ever met." He was nearly 200, that was a lot of life.

"Oui, that's how it feels to be in love. They know how to screw with your head and they aren't even trying to."

"Yeah," Logan said in sarcasm, "because that works for you with Rogue."

"My Marie and I have a different problem. Our relationship is based on fighting because she's young and scared of her power. One day she'll realize what we have and then she'll kiss the icicle goodbye."

"Good luck with that bub."

"Merde," Remy shook his head. This man. It was like hitting a bag of bricks with another bag of bricks expecting a different outcome than tired arms and powdered brick. "You and Holly, you don't fight often. You're stupidly happy together and it's infuriating for the rest of us. Right now, you are thinking about kissing or killing her, oui?"

Logan said nothing. Both. Either. Throwing her down on the bed and making her beg for harder, faster, more.

"The bike worked?" Remy went on. "She wrapped her arms around you?"

"The bike worked. The monkey suit worked. The restaurant worked. I'm out nearly two hundred bucks, thanks for the warning."

"It's Manhattan, you think you get a decent meal and drinks for two under that?" When Logan opened his mouth to yell at him again. "Listen, listen, those things worked, didn't they? I was right, wasn't I? Holly warmed up to you?"

"Yeah." More than warmed up. He closed his eyes and there she was letting him peel off those hose like he owned them. Why the hell had he stopped? Some part of him was a gentleman. Maybe that was the other guy.

"Then she does still want you. Why do you tell me no?"

It wasn't a voluntary thought. It just came to him with Remy's awful English. 'Did,' the ghost of a memory said in Holly's voice, 'why did you tell me no?' Logan hadn't realized he'd been speaking until Remy gave him a smug grin.

"Now I know that wasn't the new Logan talking." He crossed his arms over his chest. "The new Logan hasn't corrected my English once since he woke up." He reached out and tapped Logan's chest with a finger. "That's my old friend Logan. Being married to an English teacher changed him a little. You still in there, huh?"

Logan knocked the other man's hand away. "She's pissed off at you."

Remy shrugged. "Ivy already gave me shit for it. I'll buy Holly the new Charlene Harris. She'll get over it with some vampires and porn."

He didn't know how, but he remembered those. A whole stack of them in hard covers being removed from the library because kids kept trying to read them when they thought no one was looking. Holly removed them to the teacher's lounge when she caught two twelve year old girls giggling in a quiet corner of the library. He remembered it so distinctly he could almost see her walking around their room getting ready for bed.

'They're kids, they have questions.' He remembered laughing at her.

'I had questions too, but my mom did her job. I'm talking to Professor X about establishing a permanent sex ed class.'

'Who's going to teach it?'

She gave him that look. The one that went straight to his groin. 'We're the only ones having kids here.'

'We're not the only couple.'

Holly snorted and hooked her fingers in his belt loops. 'Logan, if any other couple knew what they were doing, our room wouldn't be the only soundproof one.'

He couldn't argue with that.

"Who took over the sex ed class?" He asked slowly.

"Me and Storm." Remy winked at him. "Until you two work it out. You remember anything?"

"Pieces," Logan muttered. That was the first time he'd thought about Jean in...days. He'd been so focused on other things he hadn't given her a single moment until then.

"Uh, huh, and you're keeping your word? No Jean?"

Logan wondered if Remy was a psychic. "Not until right now."

"Good. You keep your word on that. Holly and Jean, they're like oil and water. The combination is fun to look at but one puts out a fire and the other makes it worse."

Logan almost asked which was which.


	8. Chapter 8, Possibilities:

Happy New Year!

* * *

Chapter 8, Possibilities:

Being both psychic (more than she knew) and precognate, Holly had never realized her dreams weren't always dreams. Sometimes they were entire life times lived in the space of six to eight hours. Later in life, as an older woman working with mutants younger than her, she would finally come to realize this. However, this is not that time. Right now, having just gone to sleep after a long day (and long, _long_ emotionally draining week), her brain slipped from REM into the possible futures in her path.

It isn't quite the Robert Frost poem of two roads diverging in the woods. There are long strings, threads of fate perhaps, that cross at intervals. Each choice leading her somewhere else. Somewhere new. Choosing which one to follow isn't a conscious thought, or even an unconscious one. In sleep her defenses, both literal and figurative dropped and whatever came, would come.

In nearly every timeline Logan goes back to change the future. They almost always break up when he returns. In many, they get back together because they love each other even if it takes him a while to remember it. In one case years, in another, days. Some...never.

One of these threads takes her to the desolate landscape of a different world.

It all made sense now. Why Strange had said they needed her. Holly dropped her gloves, her jacket, stripping down to a tank top and then she sprinted. She jumped, landing on Thanos' back, one arm going around his neck to anchor herself. He had less than a second to react before they were skin to skin and-

There was yelling, Holly no! Holly!

Then there was screaming. A lot of screaming. Shrieking that sounded like her own voice. One scream faded into the next until it was a repetitive cacophony of wordless agony.

She gathered them like threads. Bundles and bundles of threads. A life, a life as long as his, a mortal life despite what he believed. She pulled and dug, searched and pried until she had them all. All that made him alive. Made him who he was. Made him. She saw him screaming out, the torture she was causing in his head.

If she lets go, millions, billions will die.

This may kill her. She might die, and she knows that, but her children will be looked after by those that love them. Her sister has only just begun saying her name. Logan...oh Logan...she loved him so much. So very much.

Her mind fathomed Tommy's beautiful green eyes, like hers. Jamie's happy smile that lit up the world. Logan the first time he said I love you with his hands on her stomach and the dumbfounded shock on his face. The feel of her father's lips kissing her forehead. Dancing with Remy. Rogue holding the babies so carefully, terrified she'd drop them. Ivy kissing Kurt first because he just kept pussy footing around it. The Professor's laugh when Jamie booped his nose. Storm's hugs. Colossus giving Deadpool yet another lecture. Deadpool making a crass joke that had her in stitches. Late night talks with Steve. Her dad and Banner bonding like the best of science bros.

* * *

The loss that version of her feels at losing her family permanently brings forth another thread. It takes her to the distant past. A past where she's met Logan before. Her name is Hope and the year is 1866.

James Howlette who would later call himself Logan didn't know it then, but he met Holly much the way he had her previous incarnation. He bumped into her. Albeit, this time he was coming out of the saloon, and she was waiting outside it.

"Oi, bloody hell, watch where you're goin' will ya?" A girl a bit younger than him held a baby in her arms, soothing the tears that came on when he'd bumped them.

"'S your son alright?"

She smoothed the baby's head genty, "Brother."

His brow contracted in a furrow. "What?"

Head back, chin up, eyes that were almost violet in the sunlight met his in a steady, almost defiant gaze. "He's my brother." She was a tiny scrap of a thing, and Irish to boot. Long, curling black hair that fell down her back, pale skin that would burn, a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose. "Aye, he's fine. I'm sorry ta yell. I'm havin' no luck today."

A smaller boy, similar black hair with blue eyes ran from across the street. "Da's not in the shop."

She huffed in annoyance. "Then he's in the bar."

"You lookin' for someone?" James asked, if only to keep her around for another moment. He'd never met a woman with eyes like hers. They really were violet, a shade the sky made on those warm summer nights when the sun took hours to set and the night blanketed the world in crickets and lightning bugs.

She shifted the baby in her arms. "Me mum sent me to find me da. You seen a man, 'bout your height, red hair, some gray in it round here, at the temples? Big, Irish, loud laugh, hasn't seen a razor in near a year?"

He'd seen that man playing cards with Victor. James nodded toward the bar. "Third table on the left. Playing cards."

She made a frustrated sound. "Bloody eejit, gamblin' away our money." The girl brushed past him into the bar. It didn't take her long to find her father nor for him to notice her.

"Da," she eyed the stack of notes in front of him. "Where'd you get all of that?" Maybe his luck had changed? Not likely, but maybe God took pity on their family for once.

"Made a sale," her father said.

"Oh aye, an' what did you sell? A pig? A tree? Our cow?" None of which they could spare. The pig was for breeding more, the trees were for building and the cow they needed for milk and butter.

"You for all this." He gathered it in his hands, thumbing the short stack.

"You sold _me_?" The girl's voice a horrified rasp, tears filled her violet eyes. "How could you?"

The big red haired man waved her off as if it were nothing. "Go on with you, you ungrateful child. You're near twenty three. A marriage will do you good." He counted the notes in his hand, "And this will feed us through the winter."

"Aye if you don't gamble it away." She snarled in return. "And my mendin' business has been keeping us fed for months!"

"You see what I'm dealin' with? Her mother was the same, but I broke that filly." The red haired man howled with laughter.

The man she'd been sold to, a large portly lout with scraggly gray teeth, rank breath and nearly white hair grabbed at her, "Come here lass, let me see what kind of wife I bought myself."

Hope dodged him with quick feet and darted away. She hefted the baby onto her younger brother and moved around one table, then another. Men were laughing, attempting to grab at her. The handful of whores in the room made no attempt to stop her.

It might have looked like she was simply trying to get away to the other men there, but to James, he saw it for what it was. She was looking for a weapon. A small surge of pride welled up in his chest. He liked a woman who could and would defend herself. Someone snatched her skirt and she tore it to get away. The sound of ripping fabric only seemed to draw more laughter and jeers.

Finally Hope found what she was looking for. A man not guarding his weapon. She ripped the knife from his side and held it outward toward some of the men trying to catch her. More laughter.

"Come on lass, you don't know how to use that." One of them said.

She'd used similar ones enough times at home to know where the pointy end went. Though there was no way she could defend herself against the lot of them. Hope held the knife to her own throat where she often enough cut to drain blood from a dead chicken. "You think that I don't?"

"Ah now, Hope my girl, no need to do that." Her father sounded annoyed. "He's not a bad sort, are you Jack?"

Someone else laughed hard, loud and obnoxious.

Jack puffed his chest. "I'll make an honest woman of her, Michael."

"Now see there? He's a good man."

Hope pressed the knife tighter, feeling the first drop of blood trickle down her pale skin. "**I'd rather die**."

James, unlike the other idiots in the bar, could see she was serious. Everything happened quickly from there. He crossed the room in a heartbeat and popped a claw. He put it under the father's chin. "Give the man back his money."

The entire bar, not including his brother Victor, went dead quiet. Victor let out a low, annoyed sigh and dropped his cards on the table. He wasn't winning anyway. He reached across and grabbed the man the girl had been sold to by the throat. "You heard my brother. Girl said no, take your money or I will."

The girl's father fisted the notes. "I already spent some it."

James genuinely didn't care. "Then he'll take it at a loss."

Victor squeezed. "You're fine with that, aren't you?"

Jack gave the briefest of nods. "Fine with it." He said in a rough croak.

Michael, the girl's father, shoved the money across the table. "We're going to starve this winter because of you." Though whether he was talking to James and Victor or his daughter, no one knew.

"I'll starve an honest woman than broken and abused like me mother." She snarled in return.

* * *

There was a soft, almost trepidatious knock at his door. James, having not asked for company like his brother, got up, annoyed and confused. He didn't want a whore tonight. He had an itch that could only be scratched by dark curly hair and violet eyes. One might imagine his shock and surprise when there she was.

"My name is Hope," she said before he could ask her what she was doing at his door.

Hope did the bravest thing she'd ever done in her life at that moment. She pushed up on her toes and kissed a man she barely knew.

One kiss turned into two, then three. They were in his room, the door closed by the time James' sense of self came back to him. "If you wanted to thank me-"

"This isn't a thank you." She replied quickly and began tugging at the buttons of his clothes. "Me da will sell me again, this time to someone worse, with the promise of my virtue. If I'm going to lose my virtue I want it on my own terms. You stood up for me, and you gave me a reason to live if only for a little bit longer."

"It's illegal to spoil a woman." He breathed out in the dark air between them.

"You're not spoiling me if I say yes." His shirt was open her cool, soft hands sliding against his heated skin. "And I am saying yes. I won't have a bully be the first man that touches me."

"I'm no hero," he told her.

"I don't want a hero, I want a man who wants me." She tilted her head at him, large violet eyes watching him in the moonlit interior. "Unless you don't want me?"

Hell he wanted her. He wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her in, his mouth lowering to kiss her breathless. Her chest heaved against him when he finally pulled back. "I can't promise to be gentle."

The bravado left her. "Can you promise not to make it hurt too much?" It was a hopeful whisper.

That he could do. He was popular with the camp whores for putting their needs before his. And for pulling out before risking a child. He could do right by her if he took his time. "Dress off."

"Oh, um," she flushed crimson. This was happening. Her heartbeat rushed like runaway horses in her ears. "I…" the way he looked at her, with heat and desire, her underclothes dampened. She fumbled with the buttons of her dress for several seconds before he stilled her hands.

"I want to be a dressmaker," she told him sleepily. "Somewhere nicer than this. Boston, New York, maybe San Francisco where there isn't so much competition yet." She yawned, pressing closer to him. "Again, maybe? In a bit?"

He touched a bruise at her back, and another closer to her hip. "What are these from?" She stilled, eyes downcast and away from him. He tilted her head up, "Look at me."

Hope looked at him, violet eyes wet with tears. "He said I was going to marry the next one whether I liked it or not."

Rage built in his chest like an inferno. "I'll kill him."

She touched his chin gently. "Don't. Ma, she said he was a good man once. Then he took to the drink and…"

He'd heard that story before. James kissed her again, taking her mind away from things like an abusive father and helpless mother. In a few minutes they went again. And again. By early morning, well before the dawn, they'd had gone another a dozen times or more. He slept while she dressed and reveled in the wetness between her legs.

She was good and ruined. God forgive her she felt no shame in it. She'd do it again, longer this time. They'd have to drag her from the bed.

Hope leaned down, pressing a light kiss to his sleeping lips. She almost wished he would wake and ask her to stay. She might have stayed. Maybe they would eventually marry, and perhaps a child or two.

The birds began to chirp outside. If she was going then she needed to go now, before her father woke with a need to seek the drink again to sort his headache. She buttoned her self up and left as soundlessly as possible. The whores saw her, a couple of them cheered or clapped. Hope blushed furiously.

"Well now," the board said, "I was wondering who was making all that noise. If you're interested in a job little girl, I could give you one."

Head up, back as straight as possible, "I am a seamstress madam, no thank you." She walked out of the bar to the sound of further clapping.

She made it home within a quarter of an hour, and eased the door open to find her mother sleeping in a chair. There was a new black mark forming on her mother's cheek. Had her mum waited all night? No. It didn't matter.

Heart thundering in her chest, Hope when to her younger brother's room. The boy was curled up in a ball. Hope stroked his nose with her pinkie, and blue eyes opened. She put one hand over his mouth and a finger to hers. "Get dressed." Her words were barely audible and yet they sounded like shouting. "Pack a bag."

He dressed and packed while she went to the baby. He was two, and weaned, solid foods were enough for him. It would have to be. His things were fewer and fit easily into a smaller bag. She took her own things quickly. Her sewing kit, cloth samples, stitched materials. She hadn't lied. Her mending of other women's clothes, stitching dresses from scraps paid their way out west.

Hope paused looking at the door to her parents' room. She couldn't risk taking the money. He'd kill her and the baby that might be growing inside her from last night.

James said he hadn't finished inside her, that there probably would be no baby. But she'd taken him into herself so many times. She'd be lucky if there were no children. Once more Hope longed to go back to his bed.

It was no hardship to imagine herself a soldier's wife if he was the soldier she married.

A hand touched her arm. She almost cried out, but much as she'd done to her brother, her mother held a hand against her mouth and indicated silence. Her mother beckoned her follow and Hope followed. Outside her mother kissed her cheeks and hugged her tightly.

"My Hope, my only Hope." Her mother said in a whisper with tears starting down her cheeks. "You take this." She pressed a small roll of notes into Hope's hand. "And go. Make a better life for yourself and your brothers. When you're settled far away, you write me."

"Ma," Hope's throat caught on a sob as she fisted the money, "he'll kill you."

"And if you don't go, he may well kill you. You smell of a man." Anne touched her daughter's face. "Did he treat you right? Was he good to you?"

Hope blushed a deep shade of red, "He was. He was gentle." Before she begged him for harder, deeper, faster, _more_. He obliged without argument. He made her mind and body shatter again and again until all she could manage was hoarse, wordless cries of ecstasy.

"Good." Anne told her, sensing as mothers are known to, that perhaps her daughter had been just a little bit in love with him. Whoever he might be. It was terrible that her daughter had given herself away, yes. It was even more horrible that Anne's own husband was willing to sell their eldest child to a stranger in a bar. "Go. Make a better life."

Hope, with her younger brothers in tow, left before the sun came up.

* * *

James woke a little after dawn. He hadn't slept nearly enough, but he was sated in a way he'd never been before. The bed was a mess of her, him, them. She was gone. No doubt off home before someone came to conclusions about where she'd been and what she'd been doing. Whom she'd been doing. He would ask around about where Hope O'Sullivan lived. Bring her flowers. Women liked flowers.

He'd have to make sure he didn't put his claws through her father. Women didn't tend to love men who murdered their parents. No matter how much an abusive drunkard her father was.

The door opened, Victor standing there with an expression that could only be described as smug. "For a man who doesn't like whoring, you sure made her scream."

Logan shot him an angry glare. "She wasn't a whore."

Victor's eyebrows rose. "You managed to get a woman into your bed without paying her? Who? Maybe she'll let me-" He had three of his brother's claws under his chin before he finished the thought. "Never mind."

The claws retracted slowly. "Keep away from her."

"I would if I knew who she was. The barmaid with the blonde hair?" James didn't react. He was dragged on his clothes. "That little redhead from the store? She looked interesting." Still no reaction. His brother liked them pretty, and headstrong. An idea occurred to him. "That black haired one that threatened to kill herself."

James stopped and glared at his brother. "Don't."

"She's all yours. I don't like a fight before I fuck them." He leered at his brother. "How many times did you fuck her?"

He lost count. He recovered so quickly and she never asked him to stop. She begged him **not** to stop. He was on top, she was, his mouth between her legs, her mouth on him. He got hard just thinking about her mouth and that talented tongue working his shaft.

He refused to answer which only made Victor smile wider.

"You! What did you do with her!"

James knew the voice. That was Hope's father. He hadn't said do to her, he said with her. Victor was out in front of his brother quickly, blocking the Irish man. "Who?" James decided to play dumb.

"My daughter! She's gone an' taken her brothers, and all my money!"

Smart girl. He almost smiled. "Black haired girl you tried to sell?"

The father swung at Victor. Victor caught it without effort, twisted the man's arm and shoved him away like he weighed nothing. The Irish have hot tempers though. Especially bullies, like Michael Sullivan, that had begun drinking at daybreak after not truly sobered from the night before. He came at Victor again, and again, trying to get past him to James.

"This is embarrassing," Victor muttered to James as Michael pushed himself up out of the dirt one more time.

James took the handful of steps toward Michael, and hit him square in the jaw before the man could get up again. This time he went down, hard, and landed wrong on something that audibly snapped. There was a groan of agony from the Irish man's mouth.

"I don't know where she went," he shoved the man over onto his back. "I told her to run while she could, before you try to sell her again to someone like you."

Michael spit at him. Cursing in what James assumed was Gaelic. "I'm ruined!" He finally shouted in common English.

James shrugged. "I don't care." He genuinely did not. James scowled at him. He walked back to Victor who eyed him almost proudly.

"Never heard a woman begging for more that many times. What'd you do?"

Again, James didn't answer.

He we went looking for her in Boston and New York a few times, visiting every shop he could find to see if she'd made it safely. Had he instead gone to Denver, he might have found her unmarried and the owner of a small shop.

Hope Sullivan died in her sleep after a nagging head pain in 1898. She never married and never had children.

He never did find her.

* * *

Dreams don't follow rationality, and it is the thought of a uniformed soldier that leads her past Hope's life to another timeline.

In this one Holly is on a date that isn't a date with Steve.

He's much too noble for his own good. He waited years to be with Holly, keeping silent about the way he felt. He was there while her marriage fell apart, and the divorce papers were finally signed. He's been her friend through everything, keeping his own feelings a secret because he had no right to burden her with any of it.

It is Halloween night and she's dragged him to a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Holly decided they'd go as Janet and Brad, and the costumes were easy enough to put together. She throws popcorn at the oversized screen, singing, and smiling like she hadn't in the last few years. Holly turns to him when he takes her hand, her bare hand, with his.

He waits until her eyes have rolled and the glitch is over.

"I love you Holly." He's never said that to anyone but his mother. Not even Peggy. "I've loved you for a long-"

Holly - with Meatloaf singing on the screen about Saturday night - leans over and kisses him. "I love you too," she whispers while the crowd, and a motorcycle, roars.

They are married the following Halloween, her in a white dress with an orange sash and him in a pure black suit with an orange tie. Only family and friends. It is a fight to keep it out of the papers.

They have a daughter named Sarah Rose who is in utter awe of her aunt Natasha. Over the years somehow Holly's self defense lessons morph into ballet with her daughter and Natasha. Holly's not too bad but Sarah...Sarah is amazing. Dark blonde hair, blue-green eyes, tall like her father. She's human, or at least as human as a child who is part supersoldier and part mutant can be. By ten she's accepted to Julliard. By seventeen she's dancing in a professional ballet company. Holly and Steve are so damn proud of her. Aunt Natasha is ecstatic.

Natasha...

There is a familiar head of red hair seated nearby as Holly shoves a thick binder of papers across a table. She's accusing an official looking white haired man of using parts of the Mutant Registration Act to create regulations for powered people. They call it the Sokovia Accords. There are people she doesn't know sitting around the table.

Steve is there. He takes her hand in his and squeezes tightly.

Her father is there. He will sign.

The X-Men refuse to sign. When it comes down to the line in the sand, there are a lot more willing to defend then there are willing to sign. Eventually Holly and Steve settle in Canada. A lot of mutants move north. The flood gates opened to allow mutant registration in the States.

God bless Canada.

Sarah Rose spends the first ten years of her life there.

In another, very distant, unlikely future, Holly and Steve never acted on their mutual attraction, and Holly never went back to Logan. She's not an Avenger, but in the civil war among the Avengers, she sided with Steve against her father. Years later she's waking up with the sun next to a blue eyed dark haired man who only she seems to be able to get through to. He has mental scars she can see, and repair if she gently unwinds the stitches HYDRA put in his head.

His mind is a crisscross patchwork of brainwashing, self loathing, anger and a lot of old memories mishmashed together. The first time she touched him she knew he needed her. With his metal arm locked in a press, him looking at her like he was scared of her. Who was she to tell fate no?

Sometimes she laughs. How on earth did she end up falling in love with another man named James that goes by his nickname? He laughs too, kisses her soundly and, while slipping talented fingers under her shirt, asks her to come to bed. Their daughter's name is Winnifred Rose and she spends most of her childhood in Wakanda. She only meets her grandfather, and her aunt Morgan when she's accepted to Oxford. She's going to be an anthropologist.

Holly and her father don't speak in that timeline. He can't reconcile the man that murdered his parents married his daughter. Of all the timelines Holly has seen in her sleep, that one is one of the darker ones.

Though not quite as dark as some.

There are some in which Apocalypse won back in 1983. Holly's power is a tool Apocalypse uses to an extent that he doesn't let her out of his sight. He controls every moment, every breath of her life. She knows no other family than him.

In others, Holly doesn't exist. Though she can't see those clearly.

In all of these are all possible futures, or pasts, only come when Holly sleeps. Her waking mind can't take this much information. Not yet anyway. Perhaps never, if she doesn't continue to work with Professor Xavier on her powers. Which, according to several timelines, could quite possibly happen.

Though she doesn't know that.

By the time she's waking up to the twins bawling their heads off, Holly doesn't remember a single moment of her dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried something new.
> 
> I wanted to give the Steve cinnamon roll crowd a smile. :)
> 
> This a lot of stuff from sparks of ideas over the past ten years (with Marvel's evil influence).


	9. Chapter 9

Playlist:

Set It Off - Midnight Thoughts

Panic! At the Disco - Into The Unknown (Cover)

lovelytheband - Maybe I'm Afraid

Sarah Hartman - Monster Lead Me Home

Ella Henderson - Ghost

Set It Off - Why Worry

Panic! At the Disco - High Hopes

Crystal Fighters - At Home

Side note: This is 100% going to clear 50k words when finished. Wow. We're almost at 40k with this chapter.

* * *

Chapter 9, Midnight Thoughts:

The thing about leaving your husband, who technically wasn't your husband but the guy he was before life smacked him around and humbled him a little, is that you are _alone_. Effectively alone. Oh sure, her father and her soon to be step-mother were sleeping soundly upstairs somewhere in the private condo they had that took up a whole floor of Stark Tower. A phone call or a cry to Jarvis away. But...

At one am when the babies start screaming, and one is running a fever while the other is just awake because his brother is wailing his lungs out - you are alone. You get up alone, attempt to soothe both boys while taking temperatures alone. You call the emergency line for your new pediatrician - because your old one is upstate two hours and probably asleep - alone.

The nurse on the other end gave her the rundown quickly.

It was a good thing, Holly thought as she bathed Tommy in lukewarm water to ease his temperature (which was 99.9 so the nurse hadn't had Holly rush Tommy to emergency), that her father owned the company. Because if she had to call in sick to take care of Tommy Monday morning and she worked somewhere else, that would have gotten her fired.

Thankfully it was Sunday morning, and he had plenty of time to rest, recover and - Ow. He flailed in his bath kicking her in the chin.

And you took your punches alone when you were effectively single.

The gaping wound in her life where her husband used to be reared its ugly face at her one more time. The last time this happened, the kids getting sick, Logan was up with them too. She cleaned up vomit while he fed them liquid baby Tylenol. She bathed one while he bathed the other. Once the twins were back down to sleep, she showered and he kept an eye on them. Then he showered and she kept an eye on them.

The definition of a family unit never made so much sense before.

She missed Logan so much it her heart ached with it.

With unshed tears burning her eyes Holly dried Tommy off with a towel, kissing his forehead to test how warm he was. Still warm, not as hot. She had to hold him still with one arm and tried to pour a measurement of baby Tylenol with the other. He kicked again sending cherry liquid spilling everywhere on the white marble countertop and stained the dove gray towels.

"Thomas I swear to _god_." Holly muttered as she attempted to one handedly clean up the mess dripping onto the tiled floor.

Tommy took that opportunity to grab the liquid hand soap and chuck it at the wall. It thumped loudly which only made him cry more.

"You are way too much like your father." It took a few more minutes, with Holly wrestling her son into a new diaper, white slightly too large t-shirt and forgoing coming his hair into place because he just would not sit still! "Tommy come on, please." She smoothed his hair back, gently pressing another kiss to his forehead.

Oh.

He was looking for his father. Not that babies thought about their parents in those terms. A baby's mind was different from that of a child's, at least in her experience. Children had a concept of parents. They knew this person was their parent and their parent loved them and cared for them.

Babies on the other hand understood faces. They knew this person was there when they woke, and there when they went to sleep and fed them. They knew who cleaned them and changed them and formed a sort of attachment to that person because that is who is there. They didn't have a real concept of mom, dad, grandpa, great grandpa, brother or friends.

When Holly got the impression from her son that he was looking for his father it was more like this: Tommy wanted the tall man that sang to him. The one who made him feel warm and happy.

Which only served to make Holly want to cry more. "He's not here kiddo," she told her son in a soft voice and kissed him again, stroking his damp hair out of his eyes. "He had to go home."

Tommy understood certain words. Like home. This was not home. Not for him. Holly saw it sadly as she dried his hair. Home was somewhere else that looked different.

"I know kiddo. I know. I'd like to go back to the school too, but that's not your father anymore. That's the guy your dad was before he met mommy and we made you."

Which he did understand on some level. If only the words school, which made him think of all the other bigger people in the hallway and the blue furry man who used to hold him with big hands. And the word mommy which made him look at her directly and stop huffing and fussing for a second or two.

"I love you." Holly whispered pressing her lips to his forehead again. "And even if this doesn't work out with daddy. I'm always going to be here."

He huffed again, and the tears came back.

Tonight was going to be long for everyone.

* * *

He wasn't quite sure what he what woke him. Steve lay in his bed, looking up at the white textured ceiling with foggy confusion. He reached for his phone, because apparently Tony was offended by having actual clocks, to see the time. His hand knocked the copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince sitting at the edge of the night table sending crashing to the floor with a heavy thump. He only put it down after he got past the chapter with Harry and Dumbledore.

One forty three am, Sunday morning.

Bruce called it processing time. He needed processing time after **that** chapter. He had put it down and showered, ate something, then went to bed. There was still one more book to go, with another three movies. Steve thought about taking a break before watching the sixth movie.

Using the light from his phone he moved to the edge of the bed, picked the book up and checked that the bookmark was still in place. The bookmark Holly gave him. She said she had gone to Target and it screamed his name at her when she passed the book section.

In stylized print, it declared The Wizard of Oz on the front. Two legs stuck out the bottom, with striped stockings and glitter dusted red slippers. He laughed a little to himself.

Steve got up deciding to go for a glass of water when he heard soft shushing and the shuffle of feet outside in the hallway. The voice was soft, like someone trying to stay quiet, but too tired to actually get there.

"Shh, baby," Holly whispered to Tommy as he fussed and kicked and shoved at her. "It's okay, shhh."

The door down the hall from her, Steve's, opened. "Holly?"

"Sorry," she said hoarsely, fighting a yawn. "Go back to sleep."

The door opened further, "Everything okay?"

"He's sick," she pressed her hand to Tommy's forehead as if checking one more time would prove him any cooler than he was a few minutes ago. He wasn't any cooler despite Holly putting him in a thin white t-shirt and changing his diaper. "He must have," she yawned, "caught something." She shook her head tirely.

Steve took a step into the hallway and she moved away. "Don't want you getting sick."

He almost laughed at that. Almost. "I think I'll be fine."

"Right, supersoldier, forgot." She hit the meat of the palm of one hand on her forehead. Which just made Tommy fussier and rougher. "Kid, I swear if you're developing your mutation right now I'm going to go kick your father in his nose _and_ his balls."

Too tired to fight him on it, Holly let Steve take Tommy out of her arms. "Hi Tommy, you know me right?" The boy still fussed, crying and red faced.

"I gave him something for the fever, bathed him in lukewarm water, changed him into just a diaper and t-shirt." She gently touched Tommy's forehead. "The emergency pediatrics line said if the fever isn't over 101, at this age he'll be okay. It's probably just a bad cold or a stomach bug or…" Tommy batted her hand away.

"Do children develop mutations at this age?" Steve asked bouncing Tommy gently. The boy seemed to be okay with it, the crying reducing to quiet sobs against Steve's shoulder.

"It's not completely unheard of but it is extremely rare. Hormonal fluctuations are what causes the genes to wake up it but usually it goes along with puberty. When his father was young, maybe ten, eleven, he had a fever and he didn't feel well like Tommy's not feeling well and I'm freaking out a little." Again she touched her son, this time on the arm with bare fingers. "A baby's mind is different. He doesn't think in terms of my stomach hurts or my head hurts, he thinks in the overall. He doesn't feel good, and he's hot, and he hurts and-" she yawned again, longer, louder and swayed a little as she did.

"And you need sleep young lady." Using his free arm he helped her turn back toward her door and firmly walked her back to her apartment while being careful not to touch the bare skin of her arms.

Scowling at him she said, "You know, the whole young lady thing doesn't work on me _young man_. You went into the ice at 27 and you came out at 27. I'm almost 31, I am older than you so," she stuck her tongue out at him, "take that Rogers."

Tommy now lying his head quietly on Steve's shoulder blinked sleepily up at him. "I think Tommy's done crying for a while."

She nodded offering to take him as they walked into the apartment. "I moved his crib in here so he wouldn't wake up Jamie."

Tommy clung to Steve's neck. "That's a no."

She narrowed her eyes at the baby. "Seriously? Thomas Anthony."

Steve smiled a little. "He's named after his grandfather?"

"Both of his grandfathers." Holly covered her mouth when another yawn hit her. "Jamie is too sort of, but that's," one more yawn, "a long story."

Steve began to lift Tommy to put him back in his crib only to have his neck clung to tightly and a baby's fussy cry sound in his ear sharply. "Okay, okay," he let the boy settle again. "I don't think he wants to go back to bed."

Holly groaned which turned into another yawn. "Of course." She sighed deeply, her head shaking. "You know what? This calls for Mulan." Holly picked up the television remote and turned it on, dropping the volume to a couple of bars above mute.

"Mulan?" Steve asked in confusion.

"Oh buddy," Holly grabbed a blanket and motioned for him to sit on the couch. "You really need to catch up on the last seventy years of Disney movies. We've got a Chinese princess, an Middle Eastern princess, a Native American princess, an African American princess, a kidnapped princess living with Stockholm Syndrome, a mermaid princess, a feminist princess, a princess that becomes a real girl in the real world and chooses to stay here, a princess that turns into an ogre and a few princes thrown in for good measure. We're about to have two more, a Scottish princess and a video game princess." She took a breath, boy that was a lot of princesses. "I think I left out a princess or two there, but you get the gist. Tommy likes Mulan the most, I think it's the music." She began hitting buttons while Steve sat down with Tommy still clinging to his neck. "Luckily, that's the last movie in the DVD player I think - yep."

A colorful display accompanied by the low hum of music started up.

"This one is about Mulan," Holly curled up a foot or two away from him on the couch, "the girl that saved China."

Tommy let go of Steve's neck about ten seconds after the colorful Mushu showed up on screen. He settled into Steve's lap and took a bottle from his mother.

Steve chuckled under his breath, whispering to Holly just after Mulan got to the training camp. "He reminds me of my old drill sergeant."

She surprised him with a tired snort. "Colonel Phillips. I remember."

For him, that was the first time anyone had been able to relate to something he said about the past. About his past. "You remember?"

Holly gave him the most patient, if exhausted smile, with purple rings under her eyes. Shaking her head slowly so dark hair fell into her face she leaned over and with ungloved fingers tapped his temple gently. He'd gotten used to the half second glitch it took for her to process things after touching them, but with how tired she was it took almost the full second for her eyes to refocus on him.

"I wish I could explain to you what it is like to witness another person's memories like you're standing there with them." She yawned deeply, covering her mouth and withdrawing from touching him. "And you, you noble, self-sacrificing idiot. That could have been a live grenade you threw yourself on."

"I know." He didn't sound the slightest bit guilty about it.

She sighed, shaking her head and trying not to smile. "And that's why you did it." Holly, laughing mostly to herself, "See. Self sacrificing."

They were quiet for a while watching the movie. Animation had come a long, long way since the first time Steve saw a cartoon. He was fascinated by the fluid shift from one scene to another.

"I need someone to come with me out to Long Island to see my grandfather tomorrow. I was wondering if you'd like to go? I know you're big on visiting veterans, he served in Vietnam though, so maybe you might not have much in common. I thought maybe you'd like to talk to him, someone that was there first hand instead of learning about it from the internet." You're rambling again Holly. "I mean, you don't have to. I just thought that maybe you might be interested. And the boys like you. Jamie really likes you." Still rambling Holly. "So if you don't have any plans and you're okay with it we can take the LIRR out to Babylon and-"

He was chuckling, gently bouncing one knee for Tommy. "I don't think you've taken a breath since you asked."

She sighed allowing her head to rest on the couch. "I ramble when I'm tired." Holly tried to smile again but her facial muscles took it as a reason to yawn yet again. "Sorry."

"You don't need to apologize. I'd like to go, but," he hesitated, "what about Logan or your father?"

She snorted followed by a quick sad shake of her head. "My family politics are hard to follow and you don't deserve to be put in the middle of it."A sense of dejavu hit her out of nowhere. Her brow furrowed. "I...forget I said anything."

And, when you're effectively single, you had to figure some things out on your own.

* * *

Taking the LIRR out to Babylon wasn't an option. Too many babies, not enough hands. Holly sighed as she loaded the car up once more. She'd driven out to Long Island by herself for the very first time. Once she passed the hour mark it was still another twenty three minutes to her grandfather's house. The ride back probably wouldn't be any better on a Sunday afternoon.

Logan used to do the driving. They would borrow a car from the Professor, leave early and come back late. Every other Sunday since the twins were born.

Holly huffed as her finger got caught in one of the harness straps.

Today she left later than usual. Only because of last night and staying up until almost three in the morning. At some point she'd fallen asleep, as had Tommy and Steve being the gentleman that Steve was, somehow put them both back in bed. Holly woke covered in a throw blanket and Tommy was still quietly sleeping.

Could Steve be considered a modern miracle if he was born in 1918?

Still getting to her grandfather's house before noon hadn't been too hard. It was mostly getting the boys back in the car after a day with their great-grandfather that was taking the longest. This was so much easier when she had Logan.

Her grandfather was trying but the exhaustion from the cancer was written all over his face. There wouldn't be too many more of these visits in the next year. He'd mentioned hospice care.

With tears starting to burn in her eyes, Holly finally managed to get the harness on Jamie and turned around to take Tommy from her grandfather.

Dale Harper held Tommy against his hip and side, his brow furrowed as he looked down at his great-grandson. Unbeknownst to his granddaughter, he too was thinking about the number of days he had left in this world. Once the doctor told him the cancer had spread there hadn't been much to do about it. He ended the radiation treatments, he stopped getting the hormone injections and he wrote up his will.

He was leaving the house and his estate to Holly. He'd have to talk to a lawyer about making sure James - Logan - didn't get a single inch or penny from the house if there was a divorce. He sighed, kissing Tommy's brow.

"Pop," Holly blinked passed the burn in her eyes, "I'll take him."

Dale passed over Tommy and waited while his granddaughter strapped her other son in. "I suppose you're not going to have the two birthday parties if you're not working at the school anymore."

Holly hesitated for a moment. "No. Probably not. My dad," to which Dale huffed - He would never actually like Tony. Put up with him, yes, like, no. - "offered to invite everyone from the school to a party at Stark Tower. One big party. You'll try to come won't you?"

"Of course I will. I wouldn't miss their first birthday party even if Jesus himself came to the door. He'd have to wait."

Holly tried to smile but it came across tight and sad. "What if it was grandma with her arroz con pollo or a cubano?"

Dale tried to smile as well, but it too came across sadly. "I'd tell her to get her best dress and get ready for a party. It isn't every day our great-grandsons turn one."

It took a lot for Holly not to cry when she hugged her grandfather. He didn't feel frail or sick when she squeezed him and he hugged her back. He kissed her forehead, and, not for the last time, Dale Harper was happy he no longer had to put a gloved hand between them. Holly's powers were under control enough to allow a closeness he hadn't had with her since she was thirteen.

Since her mutation developed.

The drive back to Manhattan wasn't quite as bad as it should have been. An hour and thirty minutes give or take a few. Jamie and Tommy somehow managed to sleep the entire way and were still sleeping once Holly had unloaded the stroller from the back of the SUV. She took a moment to check her phone.

Not a single missed phone call or text from Logan. There was one from her father and two from Pepper. A few from her friends. Storm and Remy mostly. Holly tucked the phone back in her purse and set about getting the boys into the stroller and out of the car.

Alone. She could do this.

* * *

Being the age he was, Logan wasn't big on texting or calling. He spent a good deal of his life without a cell phone which is why he was constantly forgetting it. The other Logan had not had much of a need of them either. His wife and kids lived in the same place as he did. They almost never went anywhere without one another.

Which explained a lot about how Logan lost his phone some time between returning to the mansion Saturday afternoon and waking up Sunday morning. It also explained why he didn't notice he lost his phone until late in the morning on Sunday. But, that is getting ahead of the story.

Logan woke Sunday morning with what he later described as a hankering for peanut butter and banana pancakes. This was, of course, inaccurate. Had he had the memories of the other Logan, he would have known that he was actually craving bananas on a toasted bagel with peanut butter. Holly's go to Sunday morning breakfast food.

Pancakes took too long to make when you had kids under the age of one.

He was downstairs in the kitchen holding two jars of peanut butter, one in each hand when Rogue walked in. She paused, watching him, this man that was supposedly her friend Logan. He was looking down at the two jarks like he couldn't figure out what they were. She almost laughed at his confused expression. Almost.

"Crunchy." Rogue said after a moment. "Holly eats the crunchy stuff. Don't know how or why she likes it, but you don't seem to care either way." She glanced around the kitchen for the tell tale brown paper bag from the deli nearby. There wasn't one. "Doesn't look like anybody remembered to get bagels though." Not at all surprising.

Without Holly living at the school a few things had gone without getting done this past week. No one remembered to go to the library and donate the box of textbooks that were replaced for the spring semester. There hadn't been anyone to arrange the Saturday evening movie, so some of the kids ended up not coming out to the main lounge the night before. Not to mention the unbelievable stack of returned books hanging out on the library's check desk when Rogue walked in there the other day. She ended up recruiting Ivy to help her shelve.

"Bagels." Logan echoed looking down at the two jars.

"Yeah," Rogue nodded, "you two, every Sunday morning with the twins." She motioned to the two high chairs neatly folded and leaning up against the wall. "You're sitting there, and she's sitting there, the boys are in their high chairs and everybody is eating bagels with bananas and peanut butter. Course, you hollow yours out because of carbs. Holly always teases you about it."

She took a green apple off the top of the fruit display on the island counter. Again, something Holly would have said something about. 'Fruit displays are for displaying Marie! If you eat the fruit then someone has to rearrange the display to make it look nice again.' Then Holly would huff and rearrange the fruit until someone else came in to grab and orange or another apple and by lunch the display would be nothing but a couple of kiwis and whatever was too bruised to eat.

Sometimes if there were enough apples left, Holly would make an apple crumb pie. Or if there were peaches she'd slice them and throw them into jello. Tomorrow morning the fruit display would be restocked and the kiwis would be in a smoothie in the fridge for Ivy.

"It's weird not having her here." Rogue's voice was quiet as she looked at the fruit bowl. "I know you don't remember a lot of it." Possibly any of it. "But Holly's a big part of the school and everybody's life. She's practically Storm's right hand getting stuff done. The kids love her as a teacher."

This wasn't like when Patience left. That was barely a blip on the school radar. Losing Holly was like losing an entire wing of the school.

Rogue, frowning to herself, said, "Logan, you need to start remembering."

He put down the jar of smooth peanut butter. "I'm trying kid."

She didn't believe him. "If you're really gonna try to keep your wife around, maybe start acting like you're interested in her." Face hot with both anger and annoyance, Rogue stomped out of the room before she said anything else to this stranger in her friend's skin.

The tongue lashing from Rogue, of course, led Logan to realize he didn't have his phone. Technically the other guy's phone. It took a few hours, a small search party consisting of Ivy, Remy, Kurt and Logan himself, and finally Logan backtracking to the gas station he stopped at just outside the Bronx the night before. The offending object was being played with by the kid behind the counter who was trying to figure out the passcode. Logan glared at the kid messing with his phone for a good minute before the kid sheepishly handed it back.

* * *

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket a couple of times. Holly, tired from the morning of being awake until an ungodly hour and from the drive, was sitting on the couch letting Tangled play on the television. Tommy and Jamie sat on the floor in their jammies playing with their toys and watching the movie.

_I hate cell phones._ Logan sent her. Then, _How did today go?_

Smiling to herself, _I know. You hate a lot of newer tech. We definitely had a conversation about you preferring record players to an iPod. Today went alright. He's doing as well as can be considering how far along the cancer is. I think he's trying his best to hold it together for the twins first b-day._

The typing indicators told her he was typing and then stopping, then typing more, and again stopping. It took him a few minutes to write back.

_Can I call?_

_No. They're watching Tangled and playing with their toys. If you call now they'll be distracted and I'll be distracted and who knows what could happen. You don't remember the safety scissors incident, but I do. Tommy is not cutting off Jamie's bangs again. They JUST grew back in._

Again it took him a couple of minutes to type. _Who left scissors out around kids that young?_

_A student who volunteered to babysit. She was very responsible until we got home and she let her guard down. All it took was thirty seconds and a turned back._

The phone was again quiet, no indicators that he was typing. The movie ended, Holly managed to get both boys into their cribs without too much fuss. Tommy was just too tired to fight tonight after last night.

_Still up? _She sent a little before nine.

Her phone rang a few seconds later.

"I'm not old enough to be asleep at nine on a Sunday." He groused from the other end of the line.

"Uh huh," Holly snorted in response as she closed the door to the bedroom leaving it cracked enough to hear the boys crying if need be. "Tell me again, what year did you meet Orville Wright?"

He went completely silent for several moments. "Nineteen oh four."

"And your first Harley, was that Nineteen thirty six or thirty seven?"

More silence followed by, "You remember everything about me."

"You're my husband," she said with a shrug, "and you quite literally dumped all of your life into my head a few Halloweens ago."

After another moment of silence, "You were wearing a costume." He paused for several seconds. "Long sleeves, white apron and a blue dress."

Holly, with her heartbeat drumming with excitement. "Yes, I was."

"Alice in Wonderland...you weren't wearing a wig."

"Right, I wasn't. What else do you remember?"

Logan, standing alone out near the back patio where the Halloween party occurred a few years ago walked almost exactly to the spot he'd been in at the time. A distinct sense of dejavu hit him. He'd been stringing lights and putting up balloons when the kids began to filter out in costume. There would be rain later so Storm and the Professor decided to start the party early.

Some of the teachers dressed up too. He remembered the petite new teacher walking out in costume. She tugged at her wrists, pulling the cloth of the pale blue sleeves down to meet delicate white gloves. He wasn't sure if he'd looked over at her for too long or not, but Rogue bumped his arm with her shoulder.

'Go say hi.'

He shifted away from her. 'Kid.'

'Don't you kid me, I'm on the X-Men team too. Just 'cos your older doesn't mean you can call me kid.' He almost expected her to stick her tongue out at him. 'And go say hi. Ms. Harper's nice, really nice. She's just a bit thorny sometimes. You know, like you used to be.'

He took the unlit cigar out of his mouth. 'Like I used to be.'

'You haven't been that thorny since after you started teaching History. Working with kids made you all kinds of nice.'

'I'm _not_ nice.'

'Sure you're not.' She winked at him. 'Go ask her to dance, she's lookin' kind of lonely. You look kind of lonely. Maybe y'all can be less lonely together.'

'She's not my type.' The new teacher wasn't anything like the women he normally went for. She barely reached his shoulder. He liked taller women, like...best not to go there.

"Yeah," Rogue's drawl seemed to elongate the word, "but then your normal type is not available, in a serious relationship, or going to try to kill you.' She shrugged. 'Maybe try someone new?'

Jimmy arrived carrying drinks, handing one to Rogue and smiling brightly at Logan. 'Happy Halloween Mr. Logan.'

Logan was about to wish the kid happy Halloween in return when Rogue grabbed the boy's hand and took off to dance before Logan could answer. He stood there for a moment thinking about it. For once in his life thinking about it. The kid hadn't been wrong. The women he normally went for were unavailable, unobtainable and dangerous to his sense of self preservation.

The new teacher, Holly, hadn't so much as said two words to him aside from that day with Kurt. Maybe he'd be barking up the wrong tree. Logan put the unlit cigar back in his mouth and walked over to ask a pretty woman if she'd like to dance.

"I asked you to dance and you-"

She laughed, a little sad and overwhelmingly tired. "I lied and told you I couldn't dance. I usually tried to avoid being touched by anyone. You," she sighed, "you got past most of my defenses. Still not sure how _that_ happened."

Neither was he but… He spent another moment looking around at the open patio. He was starting to get the idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels good to know I went in some of the directions without actually staying there. There are other directions that are still available should I decide to follow the yellow brick road(s). I have a lot of ideas that go well past where this story ends. I know the exact place this would splinter into the AU where Holly ends up with Steve (or Bucky) instead.
> 
> I also know who is and isn't spared by the snap and have written it. There were tears. Lots of them.
> 
> We are also approaching the end for this story. This should end some time around chapter 14/15.
> 
> I'm going to go to work now. Enjoy, drop me a review, throw your ideas for where I'd go with this at me. I want to hear/read them. :)
> 
> Again, thank you to all my reviewers! I love you all.


	10. Chapter 10, Fire

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Want To Know?

Glee Cover - Fire

Tegan & Sarah - Closer

Florence and The Machine - Remain Nameless

Fatboy Slim - Demons

Taylor Swift - Blank Space

Fun - We Are Young

* * *

You're getting the complete version. I edited out some of the sex to also post on FanFiction. :)

* * *

Chapter 10, Fire:

Logan’s hand caressed her lower stomach. While Holly was annoyed with the little bit of extra flesh since her pregnancy, he didn’t mind it. It reminded him she gave him kids and that, that was a hell of a turn on. He found that spot with his lips, the place between her shoulder and neck, and bit it lightly.

“Hey,” she murmured, looking over her shoulder, her book ignored. “What was that about?”

His thumb stroked over her lower stomach. “You need to tell me something?”

Holly’s brow furrowed. “No?”

“You missed your period.” Logan prompted.

Her head bowed and with a small chuckle she moved his hand from over her stomach to where it could be put to better use. Over one breast. He resumed stroking immediately. Holly’s head fell back against his shoulder. “I went back to back with my birth control this month. Should have known you’d notice.”

This time he let his teeth scrape over that spot. Her breath drew in sharply when he combined it with squeezing her breast. Her hips rocked back against him. “So no baby.” Logan murmured, breath tickling her skin.

“No baby.” She confirmed with a pleased hum. Holly dropped her book on the nightstand.

A small part of him was disappointed. Another baby with her… he rocked his hips back into hers. “Holly,” he murmured as his hands explored and she tilted her head to kiss him.

“Yes?” She asked against his mouth. Her fingers were working between them to get his jeans open. Fuck… he groaned against her lips when those fingers of hers slid into his boxers. He gave a shallow thrust when she wrapped her hand around him and stroked him quickly. His world narrowed to her hand, soft fingers, up, down, christ - this wasn’t going to last very long if she kept doing _ that _.

He had her on her back underneath him in less than a second. She was pulling at his shirt and he was ready to cut off her clothes. 

“Couldn’t let me have my fun?” She whispered looking up at him with those dark green eyes of hers.

“Your fun will end up with you unable to walk,” he warned through clenched teeth. “We both have to teach tomorrow.”

Her fingers found his stomach under his shirt, nails stroking down the line of hair to the top of his boxers. “I’m not the one that started it.”

The hell she wasn’t. She was breathing, that alone got him hot. Logan pressed his mouth against hers. The fingers of one hand were in his hair and - fuck - she was sliding her other hand into his boxers again. “Clothes off,” he ordered and sat up to drag his shirt off, “or I’m cutting your bra off again.”

“Don’t you dare. These things are like fifty dollars. ” Holly sat up too, quickly removing her shirt and plain black bra. He’d never tell her how good she looked in just a bra. Then it was off and his mind reduced to one word:

Breasts.

His mouth was on the left one with a hand on the other a second later, gently tugging and teasing her nipples. She was purring, fingernails scratching his back. He pushed her back against the bed firmly, and sat up again to hook his fingers over the top of her leggings. He eased them down, peppering her skin with kisses and light nips on her hips, belly and thighs. He breathed in and the scent of her wet sex made him painfully hard.

"Hey," she murmured to him, scooting herself down to start in on his jeans again. She wasn't a fan of him licking her. Still made her come though. 

He'd learned a while ago, she preferred his cock over fingers and tongue. Holly let him go down on her because he liked making her orgasm. She liked going down on him because she liked reducing him to incoherent grunts and moaning.

His wife, biting that lower lip at him, looking up at him, eased his jeans and boxers down his hips, over his hard on and pressed hot, wet open mouth kisses to his stomach muscles. Her fingers wrapped around him again, stroking, her thumb spreading pre-come. Fuck if she went down on him.

Logan, gently but firmly, took her wrist in one hand and pushed her back onto the bed. “Don’t start that again.” She pouted at him, her lower lip jutted out a little. He leaned down and nipped it. “I’m finishing inside you.”

She bit him back. Hard. Which only turned him on further. “You would have finished inside me.” The devious, sexy little...he growled and slid two fingers into her warm, wet heat. Her head dropped back onto the bed, her spine bowing up as she moaned his name long and loud, “Logan.”

Two years of marriage gave him a certain appreciation for knowing how to make his wife moan like that. Just for him. He worked her clit with his thumb and added one more finger, just to hear that sharp-

“Oh god,” she clutched at his forearm with both hands, head back against the pillows, her hips moving in time with his fingers. 

“What was that darlin’, didn’t hear you.”

She managed a half hearted glare from those heavy lidded green eyes before she was reaching for his shoulder. Her hand, frantic in the way it grabbed at him. His fingers pressed up into her g-spot and made small circles. Speech left her as white hot stars exploded behind her eyes. She stopped grabbing at his arm with the other hand and pressed it to her mouth and muffle the loud, wanton moans. He heard her say his name again followed by a ‘oh god, please’ at least once.

Logan withdrew his fingers, moved off the bed and shed his jeans. He had the presence of mind to shift the bed enough so that it wouldn’t hit the wall repeatedly once they got started. They didn’t need to undo all the work it took to get the boys to sleep.

He was back on the bed, between her knees a second later. She was still breathing hard, coming down from the first orgasm. “Holly,” he called her name, making those green eyes focus on him. He lined up with her wet sex and pushed in. Her legs went around his waist, hips rising to meet him. She grabbed his ass, nails biting his skin.

The first time, like always, was frantic. Like they couldn’t get enough of each other fast enough. Her hips rising to meet him, the chaotic clash of their mouths, tongues, the scraping of the bed under them. He leveraged one hand on the headboard and the other on her waist, thrusting deeply. A few minutes and he felt her go, clawing at his lower back, biting her lower lip to stifle her cries. Another moment or two and he joined her. 

Logan collapsed, his head between her breasts, her fingers in his hair and rubbing down his neck.

“Mmm,” she sighed happily in that post orgasmic head space, “not that I’m complaining, but what brought that on?”

“You and your hands again.” He said between kissing her stomach and breasts lightly. He was still hard, they were going to go again, longer this time. Experience told him she would be ready to go in a minute or two.

Those hands that were rubbing over his shoulders and the back of his neck. Running through his hair. “My hands, huh?”

He turned his head and grabbed one of those wandering hands. He lightly bit her fingertips in turn, “Yeah, your hands.”

Holly withdrew her hand from his grip and reached up to pull him down for another heated kiss. “Are we finishing this or are you going to get sappy on me?”

Logan gave a shallow thrust, her hips rose in return. This time was slower, less frantic. He moved one of her knees up to get deeper and drew one of those wanton, wordless cries from her mouth. 

“Please Logan,” Holly found the words to beg, “please. _ Please. _”

His thumb found her clit, flicking over it lightly. Her body fluttered around him, squeezing his length. Small one. Not good enough. He drew one nipple into his mouth and scraped his teeth over it at the same time he circled her clit with his thumb again. With a hoarse cry Holly came hard around him and he followed with another few thrusts.

This time he rolled off of her. The room smelled like sex, hers, his, theirs. “I want another kid.” He said drawing her against his side. 

Holly, head against his shoulder, one arm across his chest, propped her chin on the back of her hand. “You want another one. What about me?”

He gave her that look. The look that had her hot again.

“I’d like a little girl this time,” she told him with a small, happy smile. She pressed a kiss to his chest over his heart. “But, I think we should wait. At least until we save enough to buy a home nearby. We can’t keep having kids and expect to live in the school forever.”

Logan grunted unhappy with that. “We have almost ten thousand dollars.”

“And I’d rather have twenty. Houses up here aren’t cheap Logan. I grew up in New York, remember? I know what it costs to live here.”

He brushed dark bangs out of her eyes. “The Professor made me an offer a while ago. I could build us a house at the edge of the property.”

“Build us a house?”

“He said if I can clear the land, it’s ours.”

“By the woods?”

“By the woods,” he confirmed.

Holly bit her lower lip, evergreen eyes bright with excitement. “You get the first two bedrooms built and I’ll go off birth control.”

“Yeah?” He was grinning.

“Hell yeah.” She pressed her mouth to his.

* * *

He sat up in bed half expecting her to still be there, pressed into his side to avoid the wet spot where they’d made love. Logan scrubbed his hand over his face. What time was it? He grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand, the same night stand in his dream and checked the time. Five twenty four in the morning. He fell back against the pillows.

They were beginning to lose her smell.

Was that a memory or a dream? 

He glanced at the window with drawn curtains. There was only one way to tell. He got up, pulled work boots on with his sweatpants and grabbed his jacket. February was still cold and it looked like there was a little snow last night. His boots crunched as he exited the mansion via the patio doors. A blast of cold air slapped him awake.

There were a lot of woods.

He didn’t have to look long, five minutes and he found it. Almost like his feet knew exactly where to go. A place where two trees were cut down and stumps were waiting to be pulled up. There’d been equipment here. Logan crouched, ignoring the sting of cold to press his hand into the indents. 

The table saw went there. 

“Logan,” he heard Hank’s voice. 

Logan stood up and turned around. 

“You’re up early,” the blue furred man said, pulling his robe tightly around him. He looked around the area. “Are you remembering anything?”

Logan turned back to the area and he saw it. “Main bedroom was going there, the boys’ bedroom across the hall. Baby’s room next to ours.” He dragged one hand through his hair. The outline was there, but not a single part of the foundation had been put down.

Holly, if that really was a memory and not a dream, wasn’t pregnant yet.

He breathed out in relief and regret. Part of him remembered touching her stomach gently, feeling a child kick his hand. Laughing at it being like him before the kid was even born.

Hank was standing next to him. “I helped you draft the house.” He moved through the dirt to an area where there was still a tree. “The kitchen would have gone here. One bathroom there,” he pointed to an area with a stump pulled up but not disposed of. “The other one was going in the basement.” Beast spread his hands and walked another foot or two, “The basement stairs were going to go here.” His hands dropped as he looked around. “It would have been a nice little house.”

Would have been. It would have been. “Still could be.”

Hank looked at him in the predawn light. “True, it still could be. However, this house was being built by a man deeply in love with his wife and devoted to his children.” He pointedly nodded at Logan. “Are you that man?”

He was trying to be.

Logan stood, “We still have the power saw?”

* * *

The very same morning, though much later, Holly was trying to tape her fingers to go under her gloves and failing miserably. Usually she had it done with no more effort than it should normally take, but sadly, this morning hadn’t been good. She’d slammed her right hand in a drawer and then Tommy kicked her on top of that. Then while slicing their apples for their snack break she’d slipped with the knife and cut her forefinger open right at the knuckle. It hurt to bend the knife cut so deep.

Thus why she arrived early to the gym in an attempt to be ready before Natasha got there. Except, that wasn’t working. Damn.

The door opened behind her and she called out, “Hey Nat. Sorry. I hurt my hand this morning. Give me a minute to finish taping my hands okay?”

It wasn’t Natasha. Steve came around, finding her fumbling with the tape. “Here let me.”

Holly sighed in relief. “Oh thank god. I thought you were Natasha.” She tried to smile at him, but her hand hurt the second he brush against the cut. It turned into a grimace.

“Holly,” he said, taking her hand in his, several bruised fingers and a black and blue mark right on top of the knuckle to her middle finger. “What did you do?”

“I was trying to cut apples for the boys!” She cried in frustration. “Okay, but Tommy kicked my knuckles really hard, I swear he put force behind it and I’d just slammed my hand in a drawer. May have smacked the refrigerator right after I cut my finger? I think?” She hung her head. “I know, you can say it, I’m a hot mess.”

He tried to keep from laughing at the situation, but a small chuckle left him anyway. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Forest green eyes glared up at him. “No but you’re thinking…” her eyes narrowed, confusion making her forehead scrunch, “never mind.” He wasn’t thinking anything of the sort. In fact, he was thinking about how to gently wrap her fingers so she could train today. He was also thinking maybe Natasha shouldn’t have Holly do anything involving grappling or punching today. Silently, he wound the tape around her fingers, without caring that she could see everything he was thinking. Which was new for her. Most people avoided touching her skin to avoid the glitches and the mind reading. Except Logan and her dad. 

“How does that feel?” Steve asked, completely oblivious to her thought process.

Coming back to reality, Holly flexed her fingers. “Good. Thank you.”

They were standing like that, his hands hovering an inch or so away from hers as Natasha walked in. To them it was all perfectly innocent. To an outsider, like Natasha, it gave her pause.

“Cap.” Natasha said on approach. “Holly.”

Holly moved to grab her gloves from one of the benches. “Morning Natasha. Let me get my gloves on.”

“Nat.” Steve nodded, hands dropping to his sides. 

The Captain had been touching Holly’s skin. Interesting. Holly trusted Steve to touch her, thereby meaning that Steve trusted Holly enough with his thoughts to touch her in return. Holly didn’t even touch Rogue, Ivy, Remy, Hank, Storm or the Professor in return. Holly, for all of Holly’s personal hang ups, didn’t just touch other people. She was extremely careful. Almost paranoid about it outside her children, husband and father. Which completely flew out the window when she allowed Cap’s uncovered hand to come into contact with her own ungloved one. And her hand lingered for a second too long. Neither of them seemed to notice it happened. The silent communication between the two of them nearly shouted familiarity. 

“When you're done getting your gloves on Holly,” Natasha told her, “stretch.”

“Got it.” Holly replied, pulling her gloves on slowly. 

Why slowly? Natasha crossed the space between the door and Holly in a couple of strides. “Wait,” she took Holly’s taped fingers in her gloved one, turning it over. “What happened?”

“I had a bad morning,” Holly told her simply with a shrug. “I got clumsy with a knife, a drawer, a fridge…”

“A fridge.” Natasha repeated. “I told Stark those smart refrigerators would try to take over one day.”

Snorting, “Oh my god, the world is ending!” Holly giggled, withdrawing her hand. “Ladies and gentlemen of New York City, Natasha Romanov just told a joke!”

“Humor is good for the soul, or so I’m told.” Natasha replied. She looked over to where Steve had been, but he’d moved toward the back of the room to start loading one of the bars with weights. “Your hand needs to rest.” She told Holly, “after stretching, get on the treadmill for ten minutes.”

“Okay, anything else boss?”

“Two minutes walking to warm up, five minutes running, the rest cool down. And I want you using the two pound leg weights.”

Holly groaned. “You’re so mean.”

“You’ll thank me someday. I need to speak to Cap for a moment.” Once she was sure Holly was stretching, Natasha roamed over toward the Captain. Who was benching at least four to five hundred pounds.

“What was that?” Natasha’s asked, stopping at the base of the bench by his legs.

Steve, completely oblivious, settled the weights in their spot before looking at her, “What?”

Taking in his expression with a critical eye, huh, he had no idea. Interesting. “With Holly,” she elaborated, one hand on one side of her hip, the other motioning to his hand, the one Holly allowed to touch her skin. Or that their hands seemed to linger for a second too long. Neither of them seemed to notice it happened. “That?”

He looked thoroughly confused. “What?”

Interesting. “Did you reply to Fury’s offer?” Natasha asked.

Steve paused, unsure of what the previous subject had been. “No. Not yet.”

“It won’t be on the table forever Cap.”

He opened his mouth to say he knew. He was a SHIELD asset and the offer could have been an order if Nick Fury wanted it to be an order. Right now SHIELD wasn’t pushing for anything. If he let the offer go unanswered much longer, there might be repercussions. “I understand. I’ll speak to Fury,” later, “in a few days.”

Now that, Natasha observed, wasn’t the whole truth either.

**Author's Note:**

> I am a TERRIBLE human being. I know. But would you love me any less if I didn't make you cry?


End file.
